Im(Press)ive! Your Year in Review
Here’s to an incredible year of spreading your stories far and wide.
Millions of new sites created and posts published later, 2014 is in the books. We could regale you with big numbers, like these…
… but the most important part of Automattic is what you make with the tools we offer. This year, we thought we’d look back at some of your successes, and how we were able to support the incredible things you created and shared.
To Publish a Mockingbird
With beautifully detailed portraits finished with bodies out of a toddler’s dream, the drawings illustrator Mica creates with her four-year-old daughter are captivating — the post of images she published on Busy Mockingbird has been viewed over 1.1 millions times. After over 10,000 readers shared the post to Facebook, few were feeds without the link, and big names soon came calling: Yahoo. Buzzfeed. NBC.
Spurred by the post’s popularity, Mica launched a Kickstarter campaign to self-publish a book that handily met its fundraising goal. They now have a second volume of animal drawings along with the book based on the original collaboration, and the latest post on Busy Mockingbird reports on her recent trip to New York City for a showing of their otherworldly creations.
We love that we were able to help Mica’s many new fans see her beautiful work without a hitch!
Viral volume? No problem. The top five most popular posts from WordPress.com bloggers racked up 15,849,804 views without a hitch — and our VIP services handled over 28 billion views. When millions clicked on posts from bloggers on the ground in crisis situations in West Africa, Venezuela, or Egypt, our systems helped their voices be heard around the world. 
How we do keep things running smoothly? In 2014, WordPress.com engineers deployed 64,056 improvements and fixes to make sure WordPress.com websites can handle whatever traffic spikes the internet throws at them.The Birth of an Author
Meaghan O’Connell’s touching, raw account of the her labor and first child’s birth has been viewed over 100,000 times. At 14,000+ words, A Birth Story is a reading investment — but one with an excellent return, for the reader and Meaghan.
Meaghan began telling her story in emails to friends, and Longreads editor Mike Dang encouraged her to adapt it into an essay. When it was published, the internet floodgates opened. A Birth Story was picked up by Dave Pell’s Next Draft, The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, and Hacker News, and made it to the 2014 best-of lists on Gawker and Digg.
Luckily for those of us who love great writing, we’ll be seeing a lot more of Meaghan: New York magazine offered her a weekly column, and she’s in talks with three different publishers to turn A Birth Story into a full-length book.
We’re thrilled for the successes of Meaghan, Longreads, and all the WordPress.com bloggers who made the leap from pixel to page this year.
Longreads became part of the Automattic family in April 2014. Since joining, we’ve published 45 exclusives and originals — A Birth Story was the most popular among many great reads.
2014 saw quite a few members of the WordPress.com community publishing books, like
- Food blogger Josey Baker’s Josey Baker Bread.
- Mommy Man, by Jerry Mahoney, who writes a blog of the same name.
- The Princess Problem, by children’s media critic Rebecca Hains.
Blogging is Not the Hardest Part
Emily Austin started The Waiting (at the clever URL “notthehardestpart.com“) in 2011 to chronicle her experience of parenthood. Her openness and empathy drew in parents and non-parents alike, helping her build a community 13,000 strong.
Her incisive but relatable writing made Emily one of a handful of bloggers nominated as a BlogHer Voice of the Year, and we got to meet her when she participated on a WordPress.com panel at BlogHer’s annual conference.
During our chat, we celebrated another 2014 milestone: her new job as an online communications specialist for a local non-profit. The work she put into creating and nurturing The Waiting — design, writing, community outreach — sparked a new passion and helped her develop a new set of skills that she now gets to use every day.
Think writing a blog is just like keeping a journal? It can be, but Emily knows it can be much more.
Posts at The Waiting often inspire hundreds of comments — an enviable position for any blogger. Her 3000+ comments in 2014 were a respectable contribution to the 670,561,423 comments WordPress.com bloggers attracted in 2014.
The Waiting also got a makeover this year. If you’re ready to switch up your theme, we added almost 100 new options this year including 39 free and 57 premium themes.Naptime Writing Storms the Stage
Christine Harkin, the writer behind Naptime Writing, was another of the 22 WordPress.com bloggers recognized as a BlogHer Voice of the Year, and another of our mini-panelists.
We were so struck by the humor and writing wisdom on offer during the panel that when the organizers of WordCamp San Francisco were looking for speakers to be part of the event’s blogging track, we suggested her without hesitation. Her presentation, Finding and Maintaining Your Blog’s Voice, was full of her trademark wit — and of course, inspiring, actionable blogging advice.
The strong and vibrant community behind WordPress is its biggest strength, and Automattic works hard to contribute to the fabric.
We loved meeting thousands of WordPress.com bloggers at the many events we sponsored and spoke at in 2014, from the International Beer Bloggers Conference in Dublin, Ireland, to Webstock in Wellington, New Zealand, to BlogWorld in Las Vegas, US — over 40 conferences and 79 WordCamps.Behind everything Automattic does are 301 Automatticians:
- 66 Happiness Engineers responded to your requests for assistance 365,212 times.
- Every one of our 134 developers worked on the improvements and enhancements we’ve been rolling out over the past few weeks.
- 9 systems engineers kept everyone’s sites running fast and secure.
- 8 editors shepherded over 22,000 of you through Blogging U. courses.
- 24 themers made 96 stunning new layouts and dozens of customization improvements available.
And of course, along with all 301 of us and the four writers and artists profiled above, there was you, creating those 18 million new blogs and 555 million new posts, giving us the 24,485,420,085,002 bytes of data we moved around every hour.
Those bytes aren’t just little packets of code winging around the internet’s series of tubes (at least, they’re not just that). They carry stories. Memories. Voices. Relationships. Experiences. They’re your essays, your photos, your poems, your drawings. Every time a piece of what you’ve created pops up on someone’s screen, you expand someone’s universe, just a little, and they expand yours — which is the real power of WordPress.com, and of the internet.
Thanks for letting us being a part of your 2014. Here’s to 2015; we can’t wait to see what next year’s look back will contain.
Interested in being a part of our motley but merry crew?
Automattic: it’s made of people!
We hired 95 people in 2014, from systems engineers to theme designers to accountants, and we’ll be hiring many more in 2015.
- January 6, 2015
- behind the scenes, Community, Stats
WordPress.com News 
Hello wordpress.com, 2014 was such a beautiful year of great and memorable achievements. I believe the attainment of such heights have inspired the team and everybody who is associated with wordpress, to dream bigger, prepare to work harder, with the knowledge that 2015 can only get better and bigger.
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Some really impressive stats. I was one of the 18,300,771 new blog in 2014, so I was not alone 🙂
The Science Geek
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I appreciate the video link on crafting one’s own blogging voice.
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Inspired to publish even more posts in 2015!! 👯
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I love your work, your sophistication and functionality year round. I have made huge steps forward in my writing thanks to you. I cannot express my gratitude.Thank you WordPress friends for bringing out something that I never knew was in me. I have worked with your support happiness engineering team, and they are awesome. I participated in your challenges and blogging universities. I find everything helpful.
And I will pass it on.
I would like to go to one of your camps to talk about writing, design and photography.
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I need to start having babies again. 🙂
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Blogging here has changed my life, so grateful for all the support!
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Word Press has opened a whole new world for us. It is a fantastic opportunity to publish online with an open door to viritually everyone. Well done, Automattic!
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Thank you for making it easy to express ourselves! Your support has far exceeded my expectations and im grateful to be a part of this blogging community.
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Thanks for sharing this 🙂
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Wow…staggering..this leaves me almost speechless and breathless,,,but wait…I didn’t get the TOTAL number of WordPress blogs…
If we go by outsiders’ estimates (some of which they say come from Google and other firms) there couldn’t possibly be less than 440 million active blogs on WordPress.com (this isn’t counting self-hosted blogs in WordPress.org, which they say has more)…and maybe we can make a rough estimate ourselves…I think.
Thanks for all the data, Michelle, and please give us some more numbers (if they aren’t confidential)…Congrats to the featured writers for all the joy and success-on-your-own-terms blogging has brought to you! To the Automatticians, thanks a million for taking care of our blogs and fixing our problems! To the bosses, Matt and the corporate bigwigs, we know…if you hadn’t started all this, blogging on the internet wouldn’t be this spectacular!
Thank you, thank you…great post Michelle, you brought a glow to our hearts!
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Writing a blog had never been a dream of mine but communicating with our textile students has been. Being able to share a vision has become a paramount experience for me. I am able to do that by blogging. WordPress has made it easy, attainable and fun to do all that is required to make that happen. To date, I have written over 300 blogs and when I started, I wondered if I could keep it up???? I started at 65. I am still so thrilled about sharing images and stories in a way that was not possible even 15 years ago. Thank you WordPress.
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As someone who started their blog at the end of 2013 abd didn’t have a clue about blogging i found all the Blogging U, the community, the daily posts etc really helpful and inspiring. So thank you and here is to a better year! Happy New Year!
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I can say that WordPress is the best blog platform! I love WP so much 🙂
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wordpress rocks!!!
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Amazing, amazing! Thanks for sharing the stats Michelle. Happy to be a grain of sand on the WordPress beach. Thanks to all at WordPress for all you do. Looking forward to the year ahead.
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WordPress awesome and I love you so much I will be better in 2015
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Super Im(Press)ive stuff.
I wonder what 50,000 new blogs per day mean to the rest of us.
But I guess, if we don’t improve, the best out of that number will keep showing us where to go… definitely not forward, though.
Congrats to all who stood out, those who shared with the world their best – like the busy Mockingbird. Thanks for giving us beauty to see and reflect on.
So this is 2015…
And if the 50,000 new blogs continues, then so far we have almost 350,000…
Isn’t that amazing?
Thanks WordPress Team for making it all possible.
We shall stand by you.
As we Press on.
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So glad I found WP. It was the best thing that happened to me last year, and gave me somewhere to channel all my mental energy.
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Oh WOW!!! I had no idea!!! As a long time (30 plus years) writer I have only recently begun blogging… and this site so impressed me with all of the advantages you have to offer that I purchased a domain name on my very first day!!! Long live WordPress!!!
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At the heart of it all, it’s all about people and I’d like to thank my fellow veteran forum volunteers for all their fab help in 2014! You’re a rare combination of knowledge and helpfulness rolled up in a big, huggable package. 🙂 Best wishes for a fulfilling 2015.
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Congratulations to everyone and keep up the good work! Thank you for sharing these impressive stats! 😀
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I am just getting started, but holy moly those stats. I didn’t know how huge it was. Glad to be a tiny part of it. Here’s to another wonderful year of blogging!
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WordPress rocks!!
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Overwhelming statistics, really. All our voices clamouring to be heard. You guys are doing a great job.
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Yup! I thank WordPress for giving the fun on writing. I started my blog May of 2014 and I am very happy I ended the year with 17,000 hits I did not even expect that. 🙂
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Reblogged this on Ryan C. and commented:
Extremely happy and humbled to be a part of all this. Here’s to 2015, and many years to come!
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Thank you ver much WordPress for allowing myself and other bloggers to express ourselves freely and openly. 2014 was incredble and I cant wait to see what 2015 has to offer! 🙂
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Reblogged this on Web Tactician and commented:
This year has been incredible. I have so much gratitude for the people I get to work with everyday, and the amazing things we accomplish for our users around the world.
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I started my blog 6 months ago and it’s already 2015, can’t believe it. Let’s have a great year!
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Really proud of being in the WordPress community. Keep it up guys!
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What an inspiring list of accomplishments by WordPress and its bloggers. Those numbers are staggering. I’m a big fan of “The Waiting” – I love me some Emily.
As the prior commenter said, I’m proud to be part of the community and to do my itty-bitty part to keep things fun around here.
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Your part is more than itty-bitty, to be sure 🙂
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Why, thank you! Is it just me or have others remarked that your avatar reminds them of Rita Skeeter?
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They have not, but I’ll take it.
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I am interested in working for WordPress as a writing, design, photography and blogging coach since I already have 10 blogs on the WordPress platform. You mentioned that you will be hiring in the Year in Review. What do I need to do?
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You can follow the “work with us” link in the post to learn more about all the positions we’re hiring for and their application instructions!
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I started just 1.5 months ago and I like how being able to write and share to the world hoping somebody would benefit!
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Have not expressed my feelings or opinions yet. May 2015 be the year that I start commenting or maybe blog on what it feels like to be homeless and disabled. Here's to a refreshing new year.
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Thank you so much for this gift from wonderful wordpress. Love you guys!
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Amazing stats. WordPress gives anyone able to access the web not only the opportunity to have a voice, and be heard, but to have a visual presence and have their art seen with stunning themes. Blogging doesn’t have to be to popularise, it can be to communicate to those that sometimes can’t be present in ones daily lives, to untangle ones own cobwebs, and to share. My tree change blog, has allowed my folks, to share some joy and vision that otherwise they couldn’t. Thanks WordPress.
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