Birthday cake

It’s a little hard to believe that the publishing world has only been using WordPress for a decade, as today marks the 10th birthday for the platform.

Back in 2003, WordPress was the new kid helping those that wanted a simple publishing tool. I first became aware of it as an alternative to Drupal, mostly because WordPress was the platform that seemed best suited those with a news organization despite its label as a blogging tool.

Today, the platform is used by loads of major publications, including CNN, GigaOM, TechCrunch, and, yes, even VentureBeat — over 66 million sites total. WordPress is probably the single most important tool when looking at what’s changed the publishing industry over the last 10 years.

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And while WordPress’s open-source roots continues to thrive, so has the for-profit version of the platform (WordPress.com) under parent company Automattic. WordPress (and Automattic) cofounder Matt Mullenweg recently announced that Automattic just got a massive $50 million investment to help WordPress grow its dominance in the future.

Check out the infographic from Statista that outlines WordPress’ growth over the last decade.

Wordpress 10

Infographic via Statista, Birthday cake photo via Shutterstock

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