In October 2011, OwnLocal received an undisclosed amount from a funding round led by Automattic, the developer of WordPress.
On September 27, 2010, Microsoft announced that it would discontinue Windows Live Spaces, and in partnership with Automattic, a free opt-in migration of user blogs to WordPress.com will be offered to Windows Live Spaces users.
The founder of Automattic, Matt Mullenweg created Akismet so that his mother could blog in safety.