Automattic Acquires PollDaddy

Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg has announced that they have acquired poll service PollDaddy today. Today’s acquisition comes nearly a year to the day of their Gravatar acquisition and less than a month after the IntenseDebate acquisition. PollDaddy is based in Ireland. No financial terms were disclosed. 

The PollDaddy team has posted an explanation about the acquisition which notes that PollDaddy servers have been shifted to the Automattic data center. Automattic CEO Tony Schneider notes that Scott Rafer helped broker the deal.

Matt notes that PollDaddy is available today as a plugin for hosted Wordpress customers and the first version is also available for self-hosted customers. Just like other commenting services had to sigh when IntenseDebate was acquired, all other polling services better be stepping up their game now. My bet is that within six months PollDaddy and IntenseDebate will function like Akismet for Wordpress installations.

I guess now we know where at least some of their $29.5 million funding round from earlier this year has gone. Who will Automattic acquire next? Perhaps the answer lies within Matt’s future of Wordpress keynote. Adam Ostrow believes companies with large bank accounts will scoop up companies who might not be able to withstand any economic downturn.