Want to see a cool trick? Open up a new browser tab and type “wp.com” into the address bar.
Whoa! It just redirected you to WordPress.com.
I could do that all day. 🙂
Yes it’s true, Automattic is now the proud owner of WP.com, which we acquired from our buddies over at Yahoo! We’ve been using WP.com as internal shorthand for this site for years now, and ever since we figured out four or five years ago that Yahoo had that domain (as opposed to the Washington Post or something) we’ve been doing our best to get it, a journey that culminated in ultimate success a few days ago.
WP.com seemed like a great fit: people’s attention spans are getting shorter every day. Wow the weather is great in San Francisco today. Also it’s seven keystrokes shorter to type in, which multiplied by the hundreds of millions of times people visit the site every year will be a huge productivity boost to our troubled economy and prevent RSI in a large percentage of the population.
But beyond just redirecting wp.com to wordpress.com I wanted to throw something out to you guys:
What should we do with WP.com?
Leave your answer in the comments and we’ll put it into the Automattic idea machine and crunch something out at the end.
WordPress.com News 
Well done – names are really important in the this digital world and you just acquired a good one
congrats Matt. of course you can use it as a url shortener… and also it makes urls for the hosted blogs without customized url a lot sexier andreinchile.wordpress.com would become andreinchile.wp.com
Hey, fabulous people at WP.com, please, please let us all use this in our own addresses. Mine is a mouthfull, so to be able to shrink the wordpress down to WP would be a great advantage. I’ll keep my ears open to see what you decide. Thanks, Jan at http://smokinchoices.wordpress.com
wowwwwww..
Congratulations guys ..
mmmmmmmm no ideas right now.. but if i got one I’ll post it in here straight away.. 🙂
Duhh… make it the permanent site to drop of idea’s for Automattic. Not improvement ideas for existing products (although that would be okay too), but a place for people to drop off ideas for totally brand new products, express their needs, etc.
Haven’t got a great idea yet… but just wondering if you could post a photo of that Automattic idea machine? 😉
Since it’s a short url and WordPress.com is for full full fleged blogs, why not do a micro blogging engine with it.
make satrion.wordpress.com = satrion.wp.com 😀
Considering WP is shorthand for “wordpress”…
It could be an ‘at-a-glance’ hub for wordpress stuff…. The most important things people actually look at on wordpress.com and/or their dashboard. It might also be a social thing, where you (the user) can manage a collection of favorite posts, users, links, visible to everyone.
Short and sweet. I had type the wp.com address and it went, as you said, to wordpress. I like the wp a lot better than I do typing the whole thing. Thanks for the info!
Let us migrate to WP.com, or simply make it so that (insert subdomain).wp.com is the same as (insert domain.wordpress.com.
how about allowing blog urls example.wordpress.com to magically work like this: example.wp.com? the millions of blogs should benefit from the shorthand. both urls should stick, e.g. dont redirect example.wp.com to example.wordpress.com
in any case, congratulations on securing the cool domain. you must have really nice friends at yahoo.
A short URL redirect… oh, wait… 😛
Let subdomains redirect to the real wordpress.com subdomains.
Congrats, I guess. How much did you pay?
WP is short, alright. But unless you know it’s from wordpress, it’s no use really. Could also be the Washington Post, as you mentioned. Or the Weather Podcast. (Isn’t that a great idea?)
WP would be great for an email-domain. Then again, it takes longer to say “double-you-pee-dot-com” than “wordpress.com”. It looks cooler, though.
Anyway, I’m first to write something here.
Jay
You could post the profiles of all the bloggers on WordPress so making it easier to search for specific people. You could even have mini blog competitions of sorts, categorize blogs and feature one from each category every week. Small interviews could be conducted to get greater insight into the life of the person behind the blog. The key idea behind all of this to further “humanise” the WP community, encourage interaction and build bridges in an increasingly divided world.
Mmm… Utilize it as a shortcut for our blogs? Something like myblog.wp.com I think.
Congratulations on getting the wp.com domain.
Are you also going to come up with a short-links service there? 😛 (blink-blink!)
I think we’re thinkin’ and thunkin’. Somebody will come up with a good idea, but it needs some thought and — really, some knowledge of your operation. I thought it might be a good place to experiment with beta versions, but maybe that’s not practical. I’m just glad you folk are so good at helping us non-techies everytime we run into a problem. Thank you for always looking to the future. That has been a plus for everyone.
You’re unlikely to disclose how much you paid for wp.com, but I assume you did pay something. Monetize it. Make an extra add-on to have BLOG.wordpress.com reachable through BLOG.wp.com for 1$/year or so. Go figure how much you need until you recoup what you paid Yahoo for the domain. Once you got that money back, make it free for all.
I think that WP.com should be able to replace wordpress.com on blog urls.
So instead of it being
yourblog.wordpress.com
it could be
yourblog.wp.com
Maybe redirecting blogname.wp.com to blogname.wordpress.com would be a start.
Peter
wow, wp.com is a pretty nice name 🙂 2 letter domain that WordPress love it 🙂
You could turn it into a community blog, where any wordpress user can post in. Kind of like the tag cloud on WordPress.com, but with full posts instead of just titles.
Very nice, it’s a very short url to blogging home. 🙂
I believe you should develop a Twitter killer website. You guys have revolutionized blogging, so go ahead, create that magic in the microblogging world! Let the short domain name be the starting point!
This is great, guys.
I find it cool to type in just a few letters and get there.. Im a bit lazy myself i must admit.
Im sure a bunch of bloggers will find this great.
how tweet.
can you make all subdomains like that too?
–> example.wp.com
that would boost WordPress even more!
I wasn’t sure i wanted to spend the 50 bucks on the two domains plus WP credits I bought last week. I don’t even want to know how much you spent on wp.com
How about using it as an alias for *.wordpress.com., so that us bloggers could use WPblogname.wp.com?
Not really sure on that on, though it would be nice if our blog addys could be shortened. For example, http://siriusknotts.wp.com rather than the current http://siriusknotts.wordpress.com
On a more practical level, there’s really no reason to make wp.com yet another blog park. You already have wordpress.com and wordpress.org for that. I’ve enttertained the possibility of blog communities [?blogcs]. You already have blogrolls, but I was thinking of something larger where people of common interests could be a part of a larger hub, exchange ideas, identify with one another, collaborate, etc in their own personal ghettos. It would of course be better if you could join more than one, so that if I wrote blogs about bulldogs or UFOs, I could join both. Maybe have a random featured blog, tips and whatnot within each category and a way to access it from wordpress.com/org itself.
Anyway, you asked,
Sirius Knott
great news 🙂
you (we 🙂 ) can use Tag directory for vip, paid or commercial hosts. shorter domain is important for us. We use our own domain but tag directory is a big treasure for us.
regards
ozgur
how about making a fake wordpress.com home page with every word seven keystrokes short?
how about redirecting xyz.wp.com to xyz.wordpress.com for starters?
http://username.wp.com
shortening blog url would be great
Thanks for the heads up. Always looking forward ~
Create a native “tr.im” or tinyurl type capabililty and provide that as a feature via wp.com domain for wordpress blogs.
e.g. instead of http://onproductmanagement.net/2009/04/19/ideas-for-twitters-revenue-model-pt-1/
which is my wordpress hosted blog, how about
http://wp.com/xjdk3s or something similar.
This would be great for Twitter posts or just sending around really short URLs.
Saeed
Hi Matt, its a great news. I have seen the post on your blog too. You should publicize the name WP as much as possible. So that it could become a smart trend for people to enter at WordPress world, But don’t make any change in your logo because its a great identity of WordPress. The name of Wordcamp should be shortened by WP camp or wordcamp logo should be change to WP.
Make WP.com the actual domain for wordpress.com
It would be great to use it to abbreviate our blog URLs as well: i.e. blogname.wp.com, in the same way that SourceForge use sf.net. That would make it easier to write in an SMS or scribble on a post-it note for someone.
Great service you’re providing — keep up the good work!
I wonder if it’s possible to have WP.com redirect to wordpress.com AND also serve as part of a URL-shortening service, ala tinyurl.com? Maybe using a special, short subdomain or directory name?
That’s the first thing that popped into my head. But you’d still want wp.com to redirect to wordpress.com…. wouldn’t you? Maybe not…
Maybe use for shorter blog urls on your website i.e. http://juanwilson.wp.com 🙂
Congrats on the acquisition of the domain 🙂
If anyone doesn’t know, you could have done this already using Firefox and keywords. If you have Word Press as a link on your bookmark toolbar, you can right-click the bookmark, click Properties, and enter wp or whatever shorthand works for you as the keyword for your WordPress bookmark.
For my bookmark toolbar, g is Google, m is my work email, d is digg, p is pandora…with the bookmark keywords, you’ll never have to type a whole URL again. Actually, I’m even lazier than that….you’ll never have to move your hand off the keyboard to the mouse to click your bookmark toolbar link 🙂
ctrl-T opens a new tab, with the cursor in the address bar, type one letter and hit Enter…ta da, you’re at your website.
What’s WP working on at present?
Put your new generation ideas at wp.com
or cheat sheets, helps, tips (easy to find then)
or …
maybe redirect en.blog.wordpress.com to en.blog.wp.com? for example [and make it work for all blogs]
Sweet and rightful reacquiring of the domain name off Yahoo. I trust it didn’t demand too much money being forked out by WordPress.
Unlike you Matt, I’m not finding myself typing the wp.com domain name anymore than once into the address bar. What I have tried twice is typing my usual blog address using the new domain name. ie taking thoroughlygood.wordpress.com and replacing it with thoroughlygood.wp.com. It doesn’t work.
Any chance you could make that work perhaps? It shouldn’t demand much of the technical drones that one, I’m sure.
By the way .. nice profile pic of you in the shades in front of the Taj Mahal.
One thing that I would love to see is a tiny url scheme with wp.com/###### automatically generated for all our individual posts in addition to xxxx.wordpress.com/######. This would make it easier for us to represent our blogpost to various sources including microblogging platforms like twitter.
Thanks,
Destination Infinity
Cool! Congrats on the acquisition.
As for what to do with…hmm…you guys could start up a social networking site for WordPress bloggers.
He-hee! Great coup guys!
Anything that involves less typing is fine by me…
You should make it completely synonomous with “wordpress.com”. For example, when I typed bhousley.wp.com just now, it took me to the wordpress.com main page, instead of to my own blog.
Why not replace the “wordpress” in blog domains with “wp” to make for a shorter domain? I have no idea, of course, how big a job it might be to redirect all those links, though. Perhaps it’s not worth the hassle.
How about you sell WP.com to The Washington Post and we go 50/50 on the profits?
cool
I think it’s a wonderful idea, less characters to type.
Next is “wp.org”. 🙂
Yay~ Thank you very much, it’s a lot easier to type it out now. ^_^ Good job on finally getting the domain.
I think it would be nice if the blog sub-domains could also be typed out with wp.com like yourblog.wp.com.
Congrats on the acquisition of WP.com. It’s a perfect fit for WordPress (and fits in with the twitterization of the internets 🙂
A couple of ideas:
Maybe a URL shortening service for wordpress users?
Free email for wordpress.com users (maybe powered by gmail for domains)
A search engine portal that searches all of wordpress.com and all blogs powered by wordpress.org
(recently I was googling for “opinions” on a travel destination, but all the major search engines just pulled up the travel booking sites)
Hope this helps 🙂
Maybe we could get the blog’s subdomains to be redirected through WP.com i.e.: myblog.wp.com
It would be easier to get your friends to remmember it to!
WP is too utilitarian to be funky IMHO. It reminds me of the old days of WordPerfect WordProcessing. WordPress has a certain classiness to my mind – don’t not-quite-but-nearly become an acronym!
Two ideas:
The first, turn WP.com into the permanent sounding board for WP bloggers, i.e. use it as the WP’s exclusive idea box for suggestions from bloggers. It can be your permanent place to give us the skinny on what’s new with WP as well. Not forums obviously, but more of a cool interchange between bloggers and WPers.
Second, use WP.com to shorten free accounts like http://example.wp.com. Like you said, eveyone’s attention span is getting shorter..
What were we talking about again?
erm sell it, times is hard 😛
or turn it into a smaller version of wordpress.com specific for mobile internets
Make a Electronic NewsPaper with the best post of every day.
Congrats on the new domain acquisition! I love WP! Now if I only could make some money blogging like Seth Godin, Darren Rowse, or Guy Kawasaki. Maybe they don’t all make money blogging. 🙂
As far as WP.com I think you should change WordPress.com to WP.com I’m not sure what the implications for that would be considering SEO, but it sure would look better.
Matt, your remark about WP.com being “a huge productivity boost to our troubled economy and preventing RSI in a large percentage of the population” was just too funny. LOL
Any chance of making WP.com the domain for free blogs?
Then redirect wordpress.com to wordpress.org..
Not likely, but it would shorten my url a bit :p
Nick
Maybe make my blog page link into http://stripopeka.wp.com ??? 🙂
That’s nice 🙂 I’ve been telling people about “wp” and “wp.com” for a long time, it’s easier to type and they know what I’m talking about. [We’re getting so lazy]
Nice. Easier to remember for newcomers 🙂
well, it would be pretty cool if wp.com could redirect to wordpress.com for the hosted blogs too. something like, when typing mihaibalan.wp.com I would be redirected to mihaibalan.wordpress.com . SourceForge already does that from a long time ago and all project hosted there are accessible both at project.sourceforge.net and project.sf.net 😉
keep rocking! 🙂
It would be nice if you guys could use the wp.com domain
to shorten the url you get when you sign up for a free blog
for example
current format
example.wordpress.com
purposed idea format
example.wp.com
wp.com could be a repository to all the twitter traffic generate inside blogs from wordpress.com … you know, the shorter url remembers twitter… why not?
you should use that address “WP.com” as the home page of wordpress.com, and all the blog stuff like EXAMPL: (anydomain.wordpress.com/wp-admin) keep itas it is to don’t confuse people with the blogs.
Here is My Plan about what to do with wp.com. I posted this in my blog too.
#Start a classy email service, you could offer free email service to those who already have wordpress.com account with that username.
#Make a all-in-one wordpress and Automattic portal in its homepage. Like make a platform, a single platform so people could access email, wordpress.com account, infos and all link + download section of wordpress.org.
# Also in home page a easy to access all other stuffs from Automattic, like BuddyPress, bbPress and all other project.
# Extended the news section, with something like news.wp.com and post exclusive news not only directly related with wordpress but also about this internet industries. We could also make something like which could grab buzzing news from our whole network of wordpress.com, i think there might be some legal way to do this as like google doing worst with its news section.
And any more suggested, 😀 i also had some more tips to give, but time is short now, its already 04:52 AM here.
But if you people agree and our goal is projected, i think we could try to compete the internet king with this wp.com itself.
So, one day, if you change wordpress.com to wp.com; then what am I gonna do with the box of 200 business cards I have just printed? Hmmm…..
Well, I just tried therufus.wp.com – didn’t work – maybe … 😉
That’s wonderful. Now if only I could figure out what happened to my wordpress blog!
redirect wordpress.com to wp.com and rebrand as wp. great acquisition!
Use it to push social programs and charities and the like. You can even use it for stuff like partnering with TED and One.org.
I believe you should use it for shortening the wordpress url.
Let say http://name.wordpress.com/ -> wp.com/name or name.wp.com
Oh, that is a lame one isn’t it? Let me try again one more time, just let it be like that 🙂 We’ll see people’s reaction when WP owns the WP.com.
WTG! Would it be possible to pull some magic and redirect our existing blogs to user.wp.com?
This may seem a rather obvious use, but could help when I have to tell someone what to enter to see my blog.
well easy, use it as a secondary domain. I would love a shorter subdomain.
Sounds like a perfect domain for a url shortener 🙂
This will make it easier but I have typed in wordpress.com so many times that it seems so natural. Still it will save us an extra second each time we swing by.
How about redirecting each blog/subdomain to the wordpress.com domain. For example, bandonrandon.worpress.com becomes bandonrandon.wp.com. Other than that, I don’ have many ideas. I was thinking it may be a good place to post an official mini site or host the official wordpress.com blog.
You and you’re team are great, I’m sure you’ll think of something!
Sell it to the Washington Post, and use the profits to enhance all the great stuff you do.
Let users reference it in their addresses. For example, when I type BLOGNAME.wp.com, it simply redirects to the WordPress home page.
If that sounds too easy, maybe use the BLOGNAME.wp.com to be some sort of Twitter-like/RSS-feed mini feed alternative for the site??? I dunno…
I think it’s ok as a redirect. Too many websites can get confusing for people. Although, if there’s something else that could work, that’d be cool too.
You could put up an interstitial page called “World Press”, in which you show topic trends from bloggers around the world, rather than “hawt posts” about contestants on American Idol or the Obamas’ new puppy.
Hey, maybe you could even have it recognise the country that the viewer is in, and put up the top *local* blogging trends, as well as the major trends from around the world! Imagine the democracy in that idea!
So viewers living in, say, Fiji could be directed to read what their countrymen are saying about their nation’s current political storm (“traditional media” in Fiji is being heavily censored by their government), rather than the way the wordpress welcome page is currently offering them news on Heidi Klum’s fourth pregnancy!
So Americans could continue to use wordpress.com and continue to be oblivious to the world around them, and non-Americans could use wp.com and enjoy a localised, non-US-centric view of the WordPressphere.
Just throwing it out there, guys.
WP.com = word power??? Maybe it features blogs that make a difference???
I usually type “word press” and FF automatically directs here.
Anyways, you could use it if people want to choose between username.wordpress.com or username.wp.com. It could also be useful if somebody has taken the name you want, you could simply select the other domain, much like on hotmail how you can choose your thing after the “@”.
Use it as a gateway to all of your (imo great) products. i.e. on WP.com have links to, well, I guess all your products that you list here: http://automattic.com/projects/ . Furthermore, allow registered users of wordpress.com to set-up WP.com as a forwarding service to your products so let’s say someone who uses wordpress.com to host their blog can go to wp.com and it’ll redirect their browser to their wp-admin panel at their username.wordpress.com site. Or they can set it to their buddypress.org account….etc…. Make it easy for users to get to the products they want easily.
Also, while typing this I had the idea that you guys could create an iGoogle clone for wordpress products but I don’t think you’d be interested in anything like that… 😛
These are my initials, too. Even better.
Try shortening our blog names. So my 3 fans only have to type in http://rawvegandiet.wp.com instead of http://rawvegandiet.wordpress.com.
that great dear …nice domain,,,now when world became small …so our domain also..wordprees.com to wp.com .sound cool..
Congrats Matt !
Now, enable WP.com subdomains !
Use WP.com as the focus for add-ons, future-proofing,put a survey-style set of qualifications people can check off to direct their suggestions to the appropriate hopper.
But, use it for member input. Only.
Just a suggestion.
Use the domain as a Tumblr competitor, which reflects the “attention span” comments above. The big value-add is that Tumblr doesn’t allow instances on your own server, and the WordPress platform is in a perfect situation to deliver such a solution. Though I don’t know too much about the wp internal code, scaling back usually isn’t as big of hassle as building up.
I think it would be cool to have a dedicated wordpress “Featured Blogs” page.
WP.com could incorporate the hawt VIP and community posts, and have a nice, easy one-stop place to check out daily featured blogs. For example, a top-ten for blog entries for some of the most popular cloud categories.
Right now, the search feature and cloud categories are great for those with a bit of time on their hands or who know exactly what they’re looking for. But if you want to just read some great blogs on a given topic, and don’t have the time to sift through a bunch of them, it would be great to have a webpage with a simple layout where someone has picked out some great daily entries.
Who and how you pick out the entries is for you to decide. (I can’t think of everything, people!) Keep up the solid work, WP is becoming better all the time.