Automattic acquires Day One
Automattic has acquired Day One, a free journaling app that has won multiple Apple design awards and is available for most major devices, systems, and browsers. According to Paul Mayne, founder and CEO, work on the app started 10 years ago, and since then it has been downloaded over 15 million times in 225 different countries/territories. Paul and his team will be joining Automattic as part of the sale. 🤝
Matt Mullenweg notes he is impressed with the app’s infrastructure and fully encrypted sync mechanism.
I’ll be honest and say I didn’t know Day One existed, but I do plan to download it and give it a test drive. I doubt this is the last acquisition in this space for the Automattic, but it does seem they now have all forms of blogging covered: WordPress.com for public, long-form writing; Day One for private, short-form writing; and Tumblr is somewhere in between.
On a side note, in Post Status Slack Matt offered some advice for those being approached by potential acquirers:
“If a potential acquirer tries to get you to not talk to anyone else in the market, especially saying to not talk to Automattic, you should definitely talk to Automattic. The deal team can get you an ‘interested’ or ‘no’ very quickly… even if you end up somewhere else, we can at least help you get a better price.”
If you aren’t in the Post Status Slack #club channel when acquisitions are announced in the WordPress space, you are missing out on some great conversations.
