The new reader for WordPress.com is live and I’m really proud of the product and the team. ∞
“For one experiment in the study, Wilcox and Stephen asked 84 study participants to either browse Facebook or read CNN.com for five minutes. [...] The Facebook group was much more likely to go for the cookie, while the CNN group picked the granola bar.” — Does Facebook Praise Kill Self-Control?. ∞
In addition to having a great new single, Suit & Tie, with Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake has a spiffy new WordPress-powered site. ∞
“And now there’s a Rolls Royce. I would believe literally anything you told me was about to happen right now.” This Verge post on Qualcomm’s insane CES 2013 keynote is the funniest thing I’ve read or seen all year. ∞
Dylan Tweney writes on how to take back control of your own social networks. ∞
Twenty-twelve was an exciting year for Automattic. We added 48 new Automatticians and it’s been delightful to see the effect the new folks have had on the company. We made over 40,000 commits to our various repositories, about half of those on WP.com alone. Contained in those commits are countless improvements to the experience for WP.com, but I’m just as proud of the things we removed and streamlined: the WP.com homepage has been drastically simplified, and a completely revamped reader is launching this week. Engagement started rising again after being flat in 2011. Support responses that used to take days now take hours or less. We added 75M uniques to our our network. There is a demo WordPress app on every iPhone and iPad in every Apple store I’ve visited in the US. (If you contribute to WordPress, show it to your friends next time you’re in a store and say “I help make this!”) We did two acquisitions, one announced, one not yet. It looks like we’ll grow the team by at least another 60 people this year. There’s so much more already done that hasn’t been announced yet or that’s coming that I’m bursting to share, but the surprise is at least half the fun. Stay tuned. 
∞