WordPress.com parent company acquires Atavist

INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Longreads, Simplenote and a few other things, is acquiring Brooklyn-based startup
Atavist.Atavist has been working on a content management system for independent bloggers and writers
With an Atavist website, you can easily write and publish stories with a ton of media.You might think that this isn’t particularly
groundbreaking as anyone can create a website on WordPress.com or Squarespace and do the same thing
But the company also lets you create a paywall and build a subscription base.Many writers don’t want to deal with the technical details of
running a website
That’s why Atavist gives you the tools so that you can focus on your stories.Atavist is also running a publication called Atavist Magazine
The publication is also joining Automattic
It’s unclear if it’s going to be part of Longreads or remain its own thing.The CMS itself won’t stick around
Automattic said that the publishing platform will be integrated into WordPress
And this is the interesting part.While WordPress is probably a much more solid CMS than Atavist, it could mean that Automattic wants to
start offering subscriptions and paywalls
You can imagine WordPress.com websites that offer monthly subscriptions natively.30 percent of the web runs on WordPress
Many of them are open source instances of WordPress hosted on their own servers
But many websites are hosted by WordPress.com, including TechCrunch.Subscriptions on WordPress.com is good news for the web
Medium abruptly canceled its subscription program leaving many independent publications in the dust
So it’s hard to trust Medium when it comes to providing enough revenue to independent writers.Automattic could create a seamless portal to
manage subscriptions to multiple publications
And this could lead to less advertising and better content.