Automattic Expands VIP Featured Partner Program to Agencies and Adds New Platform Partners

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 2, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Automattic, the company behind the popular Web publishing platform WordPress.com, today announced the expansion of its VIP Featured Partner Program to include interactive agencies as well as new platform partners, such as Facebook and Flipboard. Participating agencies and technology partners will have the opportunity to promote their services and features to large-scale sites that are part of the WordPress.com VIP program, which include top media companies, sports leagues and Fortune 500 companies that generate one billion page views in total each month.

WordPress.com VIP launched the Featured Partner Program in March 2012, in order to expedite the introduction and integration of select platforms and tools with WordPress.com VIP clients. The program now boasts nine agency partners including 10up, Alley Interactive, Code for the People, Doejo, Human Made, inSourceCode, Oomph, Range, and Voce Communications. The WordPress.com VIP team vets each agency that applies to the Featured Partner Program to ensure the agency's capabilities fit the needs and scale of VIP customers.

"As a team that relies heavily on WordPress, we have worked closely with Automattic and the WordPress.com VIP team to leverage their SaaS Hosting solution for the most demanding publishers in the world," said Nick Gernert, SVP of Platforms for Voce Communications, a Porter Novelli company. "We're fortunate to be a part of a program that highlights consultants who are focused on world-class development, as well as user experience and client service."

In addition to the agencies, Facebook, Flipboard, PostRelease, TinyPass and Zemanta are now a part of the program, joining launch partners Chartbeat, ContextLogic, Daylife, Livefyre, MediaPass, Ooyala, SocialFlow, Uppsite and Wibiya. As part of the vetting process for platform partners, the WordPress.com VIP team reviews their code, to ensure a tight integration with the WordPress.com VIP platform.

"Being a member of the Featured Partner Program allows us to work more closely with existing WordPress.com VIP publishers whose content we feature and paginate on Flipboard," said Filipe Fortes who leads Flipboard's Publishing Platform. "This collaboration will streamline the integration of publisher Web content and ultimately make it faster and easier to work with more of the WordPress.com VIP community that wants to be present on Flipboard."

"Some of the world's biggest brands and publishers rely on WordPress.com VIP Services. We want to seamlessly connect these top-tier sites with agencies and platforms that consistently do great work with WordPress," said Paul Maiorana, Director of Platform Services for Automattic.

The expansion of the VIP Feature Partner Program comes as the entire WordPress platform continues to see impressive growth. Currently 16.7% of the top million sites run on WordPress. For more information on current Featured Partners and to learn how to join the Featured Partner Program, please visit http://vip.wordpress.com/partners/.

About Automattic
Automattic offers a network of web services for online publishers including WordPress.com, VIP hosting and support, VaultPress, Akismet, VideoPress, Polldaddy, IntenseDebate, Gravatar, and more. The Automattic network attracts over half a billion worldwide unique visitors every month. For more information, visit http://automattic.com/.

SOURCE Automattic