You may have noticed there have been some new high-profile neighbors around here such as Anousheh Ansari and Web Worker Daily.
These blogs are part of the VIP blog program, which we’ve now made details about public.
The idea is that many successful blogs outgrow what they can technically or monetarily support. The seeds of VIP got started when our friend Robert Scoble was in a blog bind and we wanted to help out, but it required some custom work. We can do that for one or two people, but not three hundred and fifty thousand. However the trade off is usually worth it if the blog is prominent enough to bring new exposure to WordPress.com.
By making this program public we’re hoping to reward some people who we might not know personally (including current WordPress.com blogs) with the same sort of opportunities and benefits that our friends had. Our main focus is still new features and customization for everyone, but we’ve lowered the handholding it takes to run a VIP site to where we can make room for a handful more.
If you’re a fan of a blog struggling with growth, consider pointing them to VIP hosting and your favorite blogger can get back to worrying about content and not servers. We can’t accept everyone, but you folks have shown you have good taste in the past.
WordPress.com News 
cool
now that’s awesome..
Hi Folks..
good idea and for shore a perfect way to promote wordpress.com
Keep on your good work
PeterPan
Anousheh is great and U too,
Thanks for supporting her
that makes sense.
I know my colleague Andreas will love this. i will recomend it to him right away!! He has had serious hosting problems for his blog (which has 18k incoming links on technorati from his popular themes). Will read more, thanks for this new initiative…..
Hmmmmmm 🙂 That’s pretty cool. I’m off to check out the details.
I don’t realy care if some get special treatment, just want custom header option for the Kubrick theme. : )
Does this mean that WP.com may be a little closer to offering a paid upgrade for domain mappings? 🙂
wow that is really great. For those who have really successful blogs out there on wordpress.com this is huge. Of course, now they won’t have to worry about the technicalities and get back to their great content.
Great job guys!
Finally we know about VIP blogs. I agree that VIP blogs do give wordpress the kind of exposure it deserves and needs as well.
Can i get vip-ed? 😛
how many unique hits a day make you VIP worhty?
Keep the good hits comin!! 😉
Cool..
But…
>>$500 to setup your site and $250 a month.
:O
Anyway, Thanks.. Im still looking forward to get the paid-upgrade which can be cost around $5 or $6 per month.
I really don’t care about VIP’s but it’s good to know who the VIP’s are. Can they be removed in the TOP BLOGs since they are special anyway?
its a great idea, i only hope i can acheive a status similar to the VIP.
you might want to talk to http://www.waiterrant.net
ME! ME! ME! bwahahaha…. 🙂
Getting more VIP Blogs is sure going to increase WordPress’s rankings although I don’t know what’s higher than No.1 at which WP currently is….. 😀
Gr8 idea wordpress rules!!!!!!!!
amazing idea. thanks!
I like it how you explain the service for the price it is. I mean for someone with the technical knowhow they could go get a dedicated server for a lot less than you charge and host it themselves etc etc but it just seems so easy to do for someone who doesn’t want to worry about blogs going down and as you say it “technical mumbo jumbo.” You say it well 🙂
$250 a month??! A VDS from Media Temple costs a hell of a lot less than that – and should offer just as good preformance.
Dang.
Blaze, thanks. 🙂
Andre, for $250/mo you can buy a decent Dual Xeon server from a good provider.
One server would not handle the spikes in traffic we see.
If that one server goes down, you are down. For big sites, time is money.
And that’s not even counting the cost of maintaining the dang thing.
Based on the feedback we’ve gotten thus far, we’re probably going to raise the price next month.
I liked the idea..
I tried posting about this three days ago, but still don’t see my post up here:
Unfortunately, because the Anousheh Ansari and Web Worker Daily blogs are now hosted on WordPress.com, and WordPress.com is blocked in China, those blogs are now blocked in China too.
I previously posted a possible course of action WordPress.com could take towards getting ublocked in China, to which Matt briefly responded saying “Honestly I wouldn’t even know who to talk to if we were going to do this.” Unfortunately, I don’t know who to talk to either.
Couldn’t you just make sure the VIP blogs are on a completely different network? Or i guess it would be hard to maintain 2 whole clusters or servers. I guess you are going to have to make a workaround for China as Kevin Smith suggests. Unless of course you don’t want that huge part of the world to be able to visit wordpress blogs?