Sergey Brin

Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin (Russian: Сергей Михайлович Брин; born August 21, 1973) is a Russian-born American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur who, with Larry Page, co-founded Google, one of the largest internet companies.[3][4] As of 2011, his personal wealth is estimated to be $16.7 billion.[1]

Brin immigrated to the United States from Soviet Union at the age of six. He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Maryland, following in his father's and grandfather's footsteps by studying mathematics, as well as computer science. After graduation, he moved to Stanford to acquire a Ph.D in computer science. There he met Larry Page, with whom he later became friends. They crammed their dormitory room with inexpensive computers and applied Brin’s data mining system to build a superior search engine. The program became popular at Stanford and they suspended their PhD studies to start up Google in a rented garage.

The Economist magazine referred to Brin as an "Enlightenment Man", and someone who believes that "knowledge is always good, and certainly always better than ignorance", a philosophy that is summed up by Google’s motto of making all the world’s information "universally accessible and useful"[5] and "Don't be evil".

Early life and education

Sergey Brin was born in Moscow to Jewish parents, Michael Brin and Eugenia Brin, both graduates of Moscow State University.[6] His father is a mathematics professor at the University of Maryland, and his mother is a research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.[7][8]

Childhood in the Soviet Union

In 1979, when Brin was six, his family felt compelled to emigrate to the United States. In an interview with Mark Malseed, author of The Google Story,[9] Sergey's father explains how he was "forced to abandon his dream of becoming an astronomer even before he reached college". Although an official policy of anti-Semitism did not exist in the Soviet Union, Michael Brin claims Communist Party heads barred Jews from upper professional ranks by denying them entry to universities: "Jews were excluded from the physics departments, in particular..." Michael Brin therefore changed his major to mathematics where he received nearly straight A's. He said, "Nobody would even consider me for graduate school because I was Jewish."[10] At Moscow State University, Jews were required to take their entrance exams in different rooms from non-Jewish applicants, which were nicknamed gas-chambers, and they were marked on a harsher scale.[11]

The Brin family lived in a three-room apartment in central Moscow, which they also shared with Sergey's paternal grandmother.[10] Sergey told Malseed, "I've known for a long time that my father wasn't able to pursue the career he wanted", but Sergey only picked up the details years later after they had settled in the United States. He learned how, in 1977, after his father returned from a mathematics conference in Warsaw, Poland, he announced that it was time for the family to emigrate. "We cannot stay here any more", he told his wife and mother. At the conference, he was able to "mingle freely with colleagues from the United States, France, England and Germany, and discovered that his intellectual brethren in the West were 'not monsters.'" He added, "I was the only one in the family who decided it was really important to leave...."[10]

Sergey's mother was less willing to leave their home in Moscow, where they had spent their entire lives. Malseed writes, "For Genia, the decision ultimately came down to Sergey. While her husband admits he was thinking as much about his own future as his son's, for her, 'it was 80/20' about Sergey." They formally applied for their exit visa in September 1978, and as a result his father "was promptly fired". For related reasons, his mother also had to leave her job. For the next eight months, without any steady income, they were forced to take on temporary jobs as they waited, afraid their request would be denied as it was for many refuseniks. During this time his parents shared responsibility for looking after him and his father taught himself computer programming. In May 1979, they were granted their official exit visas and were allowed to leave the country.[10]

At an interview in October, 2000, Brin said, "I know the hard times that my parents went through there, and am very thankful that I was brought to the States."[12] A decade earlier, in the summer of 1990, a few weeks before his 17th birthday, his father led a group of gifted high school math students, including Sergey, on a two-week exchange program to the Soviet Union. "As Sergey recalls, the trip awakened his childhood fear of authority" and he remembers that his first "impulse on confronting Soviet oppression had been to throw pebbles at a police car." Malseed adds, "On the second day of the trip, while the group toured a sanitarium in the countryside near Moscow, Sergey took his father aside, looked him in the eye and said, 'Thank you for taking us all out of Russia.'"[10]
[edit] Education in the United States

Brin attended grade school at Paint Branch Montessori School in Adelphi, Maryland, but he received further education at home; his father, a professor in the department of mathematics at the University of Maryland, nurtured his interest in mathematics and his family helped him retain his Russian-language skills. In September 1990, after having attended Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, Maryland, Brin enrolled in the University of Maryland to study computer science and mathematics, where he received his Bachelor of Science in May 1993 with honors.[13]

Brin began his graduate study in computer science at Stanford University on a graduate fellowship from the National Science Foundation. In 1993, he interned at Wolfram Research, makers of Mathematica.[13] He is on leave from his Ph.D. studies at Stanford.[14]
[edit] Search engine development

During an orientation for new students at Stanford, he met Larry Page. In a recent interview for The Economist, Brin jokingly said "We're both kind of obnoxious." They seemed to disagree on most subjects. But after spending time together, they "became intellectual soul-mates and close friends". Brin's focus was on developing data mining systems while Page's was in extending "the concept of inferring the importance of a research paper from its citations in other papers."[5] Together, the pair authored what is widely considered their seminal contribution, a paper entitled "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine."[15]

Combining their ideas, they "crammed their dormitory room with cheap computers" and tested their new search engine designs on the web. Their project grew quickly enough "to cause problems for Stanford's computing infrastructure." But they realized they had succeeded in creating a superior engine for searching the web and suspended their PhD studies to work more on their system.[5]

As Mark Malseed wrote, "Soliciting funds from faculty members, family and friends, Sergey and Larry scraped together enough to buy some servers and rent that famous garage in Menlo Park. ... [soon after], Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim wrote a $100,000 check to “Google, Inc.” The only problem was, “Google, Inc.” did not yet exist—the company hadn’t yet been incorporated. For two weeks, as they handled the paperwork, the young men had nowhere to deposit the money."[10]

The Economist magazine describes Brin's approach to life, like Page's, as based on a vision summed up by Google's motto, "of making all the world's information 'universally accessible and useful.'" Others have compared their vision to the impact of Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of modern printing:

    "In 1440, Johannes Gutenberg introduced Europe to the mechanical printing press, printing Bibles for mass consumption. The technology allowed for books and manuscripts – originally replicated by hand – to be printed at a much faster rate, thus spreading knowledge and helping to usher in the European Renaissance. . . Google has done a similar job."[16]

The comparison was likewise noted by the authors of The Google Story: "Not since Gutenberg . . . has any new invention empowered individuals, and transformed access to information, as profoundly as Google."[9]:1

Not long after the two "cooked up their new engine for web searches, they began thinking about information that is today beyond the web", such as digitizing books, and expanding health information.[5]

Personal life

In May 2007, Brin married Anne Wojcicki in The Bahamas. Wojcicki is a biotech analyst and a 1996 graduate of Yale University with a B.S. in biology.[2][17] She has an active interest in health information, and together she and Brin are developing new ways to improve access to it. As part of their efforts, they have brainstormed with leading researchers about the human genome project. "Brin instinctively regards genetics as a database and computing problem. So does his wife, who co-founded the firm, 23andMe", which lets people analyze and compare their own genetic makeup (consisting of 23 pairs of chromosomes).[5] In a recent announcement at Google’s Zeitgeist conference, he said he hoped that some day everyone would learn their genetic code in order to help doctors, patients, and researchers analyze the data and try to repair bugs.[5]

Brin's mother, Eugenia, has been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. In 2008, he decided to make a donation to the University of Maryland School of Medicine, where his mother is being treated.[18] Brin used the services of 23andMe and discovered that although Parkinson's is generally not hereditary, both he and his mother possess a mutation of the LRRK2 gene (G2019S) that puts the likelihood of his developing Parkinson's in later years between 20 and 80%.[5] When asked whether ignorance was not bliss in such matters, he stated that his knowledge means that he can now take measures to ward off the disease. An editorial in The Economist magazine states that "Mr Brin regards his mutation of LRRK2 as a bug in his personal code, and thus as no different from the bugs in computer code that Google’s engineers fix every day. By helping himself, he can therefore help others as well. He considers himself lucky. ... But Mr. Brin was making a much bigger point. Isn’t knowledge always good, and certainly always better than ignorance?"[5]

Brin and his wife run The Brin Wojcicki Foundation.[19]

In November, 2011 Brin and his wife's foundation, The Brin Wojcicki Foundation awarded 500,000 dollars to the Wikimedia Foundation as it started its eighth annual fundraising campaign. [20]

Censorship of Google in China

Remembering his youth and his family's reasons for leaving the Soviet Union, he "agonized over Google’s decision to appease the communist government of China by allowing it to censor search engine results", but decided that the Chinese would still be better off than without having Google available.[5] He explained his reasoning to Fortune magazine:

    "We felt that by participating there, and making our services more available, even if not to the 100 percent that we ideally would like, that it will be better for Chinese web users, because ultimately they would get more information, though not quite all of it."[21]

On January 12, 2010, Google reported a large cyber attack on its computers and corporate infrastructure that began a month earlier, which included accessing numerous Gmail accounts and the theft of Google's intellectual property. After the attack was determined to have originated in China, the company stated that it would no longer agree to censor its search engine in China and may exit the country altogether. The New York Times reported that "a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, but that the attack also targeted 20 other large companies in the finance, technology, media and chemical sectors."[22][23] It was later reported that the attack included "one of Google’s crown jewels, a password system that controls access by millions of users worldwide."[24]

In late March, 2010, it officially discontinued its China-based search engine while keeping its uncensored Hong Kong site in operation. In a similar move, domain registrar Go Daddy Inc. also told Congress it will be cutting back due to new Chinese requirements for confidential information about their registrants.[25] Speaking for Google, Brin stated during an interview, "One of the reasons I am glad we are making this move in China is that the China situation was really emboldening other countries to try and implement their own firewalls."[25] During another interview with Spiegel, he added, "For us it has always been a discussion about how we can best fight for openness on the Internet. We believe that this is the best thing that we can do for preserving the principles of the openness and freedom of information on the Internet."[26]

While only a few large companies so far pledged their support for the move, many Internet "freedom proponents are cheering the move," and it is "winning it praise in the U.S." from lawmakers.[25][27] Senator Byron Dorgan stated that "Google's decision is a strong step in favor of freedom of expression and information."[28] And Congressman Bob Goodlatte said, "I applaud Google for its courageous step to stop censoring search results on Google.com. Google has drawn a line in the sand and is shining a light on the very dark area of individual liberty restrictions in China."[29] From the business perspective, many recognize that the move is likely to affect Google's profits: "Google is going to pay a heavy price for its move, which is why it deserves praise for refusing to censor its service in China."[30] The New Republic adds that "Google seems to have arrived at the same link that was obvious to Andrei Sakharov: the one between science and freedom," referring to the move as "heroism."[31]

Awards and recognition

In 2002, Brin, along with Larry Page, was named to the MIT Technology Review TR100, as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.[32]

In 2003, both Brin and Page received an honorary MBA from IE Business School "for embodying the entrepreneurial spirit and lending momentum to the creation of new businesses...".[33] And in 2004, they received the Marconi Foundation Prize, the "Highest Award in Engineering", and were elected Fellows of the Marconi Foundation at Columbia University. "In announcing their selection, John Jay Iselin, the Foundation's president, congratulated the two men for their invention that has fundamentally changed the way information is retrieved today." They joined a "select cadre of 32 of the world's most influential communications technology pioneers..."[34]

In 2004, Brin received the Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award with Larry Page at a ceremony in Chicago, Illinois.

In November 2009, Forbes magazine decided Brin and Larry Page were the fifth most powerful people in the world.[35] Earlier that same year, in February, Brin was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering, which is "among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer ... [and] honors those who have made outstanding contributions to engineering research, practice...". He was selected specifically, "for leadership in development of rapid indexing and retrieval of relevant information from the World Wide Web."[36]

In their "Profiles" of Fellows, the National Science Foundation included a number of earlier awards:

    "he has been a featured speaker at the World Economic Forum and the Technology, Entertainment and Design Conference. ... PC Magazine has praised Google [of] the Top 100 Web Sites and Search Engines (1998) and awarded Google the Technical Excellence Award, for Innovation in Web Application Development in 1999. In 2000, Google earned a Webby Award, a People's Voice Award for technical achievement, and in 2001, was awarded Outstanding Search Service, Best Image Search Engine, Best Design, Most Webmaster Friendly Search Engine, and Best Search Feature at the Search Engine Watch Awards."[37]

According to Forbes he and Larry Page are currently tied as the 24th richest person in the world with a personal wealth of US$19.8 billion in 2011.[38]

Other interests

Brin is working on other, more personal projects that reach beyond Google. For example, he and Page are trying to help solve the world’s energy and climate problems at Google’s philanthropic arm Google.org, which invests in the alternative energy industry to find wider sources of renewable energy. The company acknowledges that its founders want "to solve really big problems using technology."[39]

In October 2010, for example, they invested in a major offshore wind power development to assist the East coast power grid,[40] which may eventually become the first "offshore wind farm" in the United States.[41] A week earlier they introduced a car that, with "artificial intelligence," can drive itself using video cameras and radar sensors.[39] In the future, drivers of cars with similar sensors would have fewer accidents. These safer vehicles could therefore be built lighter and require less fuel consumption.[42]

They are trying to get companies to create innovative solutions to increasing the world's energy supply.[43] He is an investor in Tesla Motors, which has developed the Tesla Roadster, a 244-mile (393 km) range battery electric vehicle.

Brin has appeared on television shows and many documentaries, including Charlie Rose, CNBC, and CNN. In 2004, he and Larry Page were named "Persons of the Week" by ABC World News Tonight. In January 2005 he was nominated to be one of the World Economic Forum's "Young Global Leaders". He and Page are also the executive producers of the 2007 film Broken Arrows.

In June 2008, Brin invested $4.5 million in Space Adventures, the Virginia-based space tourism company. His investment will serve as a deposit for a reservation on one of Space Adventures' proposed flights in 2011. So far, Space Adventures has sent seven tourists into space.[44]

He and Page co-own a customized Boeing 767–200 and a Dornier Alpha Jet, and pay $1.4 million a year to house them and two Gulfstream V jets owned by Google executives at Moffett Federal Airfield. The aircraft have had scientific equipment installed by NASA to allow experimental data to be collected in flight.[45][46]

Brin is a member of AmBAR, a networking organization for Russian-speaking business professionals (both expatriates and immigrants) in the United States. He has made many speaking appearances.[47]

Quotations

    "I think as a kid, I always had a kind of scientific curiosity. I was always interested in mathematics, and I always enjoyed doing math problems. In fact, my undergrad, I had a degree in both math and computer science. I think, eventually, I was really inspired by computers because of the amazing power that they give you. Today's PCs do a billion operations per second. It's almost inconceivable, and I think that was the most inspiring thing to me, how you could leverage that to actually produce something that was useful, beyond video games and things like that."[48]

    "When it’s too easy to get money, then you get a lot of noise mixed in with the real innovation and entrepreneurship. Tough times bring out the best parts of Silicon Valley."[43]

    "We came up with the notion that not all web pages are created equal. People are — but not web pages."[49]

    "Technology is an inherent democratizer. Because of the evolution of hardware and software, you’re able to scale up almost anything. It means that in our lifetime everyone may have tools of equal power."

source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin

Tom Fulp

Thomas Michael "Tom" Fulp (born April 30, 1978) is the co-owner of video game company The Behemoth,[1] and the creator and administrator of Newgrounds, a popular website for sharing Flash files.[2] He co-created the Flash game Alien Hominid, which was later ported to consoles, and the console game Castle Crashers.[3]

Fulp was born and raised in Perkasie, Pennsylvania, and attended Pennridge High School, where he graduated in 1996. He later attended Drexel University, in Philadelphia, where during his freshman year he got interested in rave parties and became a DJ for a short span of time.

source  : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Fulp

Markus Frind

Markus Frind is the founder of Plentyoffish.com. He graduated in 1999 from British Columbia Institute of Technology with a diploma in Computer Systems Technology. Over the next few years, he worked for several dot.com companies as the number of them in Vancouver began to wane. Markus ended up working at a company as a website and database administrator where he found and fixed errors.

In 2003, Frind had to learn ASP.NET and to better learn the language, he built a dating website. The free dating website quickly grew in Canada and then spread, via word of mouth, to the U.K., Australia, and the United States. To keep the site free, Plentyoffish began using AdSense to generate revenue. The first cheque arrived in July 2003 and was for $1,100 USD.

In 2004, PlentyofFish became a full-time business for Frind. He ran the site independently until 2007, when he began hiring other employees at his new Vancouver headquarters.

source : http://www.crunchbase.com/person/markus-frind

Kevin Rose

Kevin Rose (born Robert Kevin Rose, February 21, 1977) is an American Internet entrepreneur who co-founded Revision3, Digg, Pownce, and Milk. He also served as production assistant and temporary co-host at TechTV's The Screen Savers.

Early life

Rose was born in Redding, California[1] and lived in Oregon before his family moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, where he spent most of his childhood. He became an Eagle Scout with the Boy Scouts of America.[2] Rose transferred to Vo-Tech High School in Las Vegas in 1992. He then attended the University of Nevada Las Vegas, majoring in computer science but dropped out in 1998.[3] He worked for two dot-com startups through CMGI.[1]

Career

Television

Rose was hired as a production assistant for The Screen Savers. He began appearing on-air, in "Dark Tip" segments, and on Unscrewed with Martin Sargent where he provided information on developing computing activities. He became a regular co-host when Leo Laporte left TechTV on March 31, 2004. On March 25, 2004, Comcast's G4 gaming channel announced a merger with TechTV which resulted in a round of layoffs. Rose moved to Los Angeles to stay with G4. On May 22, 2005, Rose reached an agreement with G4 that released him from his contract and went on to create Systm and later, Revision3.

Guest appearances

Kevin Rose appeared on the first episode of R&D TV alongside Diggnation co-host Alex Albrecht.[4] On November 14, 2007, he was a contestant on a game show at NewTeeVee Live.[5][6] On March 11, 2009 and April 16, 2010, Rose was a guest on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon along with fellow Diggnation host Alex Albrecht.

Podcasting

Rose began podcasting on July 24, 2003, with the release of the first episode of thebroken while he was still working on The Screen Savers at TechTV. Rose founded Revision3 in Los Angeles, California with Jay Adelson and David Prager in April 2005.[citation needed] On July 1, 2005, Rose and Alex Albrecht started the weekly podcast, Diggnation, which summarizes top stories submitted by Digg users. On October 3rd, 2011, Alex and Kevin announced that they will be retiring the weekly Diggnation show at the end of the year. The final show is scheduled to tape on December 30th, 2011.[7][8]

Startups

In 2004, Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson formed Digg, a technology link website. The website was publicly launched on December 5, 2004.[3][9] In 2007, he was named to the MIT Technology Review TR35 as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35.[10] On September 1, 2010, Rose was replaced as CEO[11] by Matt Williams, a former general manager of consumer payments at Amazon. On March 18, 2011, Rose resigned from his position at Digg.[12][13]

On June 27, 2007, Rose launched a micro-blogging site named Pownce[14] which was closed down in less than a year. In April 2011, the technology blog TechCrunch reported on the funding of "Milk".[15] The company is focused on creating mobile applications. The first application to be release is Oink, a tool for ranking real-world items.[16]

Investments

Rose invested in Gowalla, Twitter, Foursquare, Dailybooth, NGMOCO, SimpleGeo, 3crowd, OMGPOP, Square, Facebook, Chomp and Formspring.[17][18][19][20]

Matt Mullenweg

Matthew Charles Mullenweg (born January 11, 1984 in Houston, Texas) is an online social media entrepreneur, web developer and musician living in San Francisco, California. He is best known for his development of the free and open source web software, WordPress (which is now managed by The WordPress Foundation). He founded Automattic, a company based in California which provides free WordPress blogs. He is also an open source enthusiast, being the lead developer at WordPress Foundation. Graduate from University of Houston

More

He is the founding developer of the popular open-source blogging software WordPress and writes a popular blog. ma.tt, a domain hack. After quitting his job at CNET, he has devoted the majority of his time to developing a number of open source projects and is a frequent speaker at conferences, such as Canada's Northern Voice and the WordCamp events organized around WordPress software.

In late 2005, he founded Automattic, the business behind WordPress.com and Akismet. Mullenweg attended the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts where he studied jazz saxophone.[3] Mullenweg is also a Dvorak Keyboard user.[4]

WordPress history

In June 2002 Mullenweg started using the b2/cafelog blogging software to complement the photos he was taking on a trip to Washington D.C. after participating in the National Fed Challenge competition. He contributed some minor code regarding typographic entities and cleaner permalinks.

Several months after development of b2 had stopped, in January 2003, he announced[5] on his blog his plan of forking the software to bring it up to date with web standards and his needs. He was quickly contacted by Mike Little and together they started WordPress from the b2 codebase. They were soon joined by original b2 developer Michel Valdrighi. Mullenweg was only nineteen years old, and a freshman (studying philosophy and political science) at the University of Houston at the time.

He co-founded the Global Multimedia Protocols Group in March 2004 with Eric Meyer and Tantek Çelik. GMPG wrote the first of the Microformats[citation needed].

In April 2004 with fellow WordPress developer Dougal Campbell, they launched Ping-O-Matic[8] which is a hub for notifying blog search engines such as Technorati of blog updates. Ping-O-Matic currently handles over 1 million pings a day.[citation needed]

In May 2004 chief WordPress competitor Movable Type announced a radical price change[9] which drove thousands of users to seek alternate solutions. This is widely regarded as the tipping point for WordPress.

In October 2004, he was recruited by CNET[10] to work on WordPress for them and help them with blogs and new media offerings. He dropped out of college and moved to San Francisco from Houston, TX the following month.

In December 2004, Mullenweg announced bbPress[11] which he wrote from scratch in a few days over the holidays.

Mullenweg and the WordPress team released WordPress 1.5 "Strayhorn"[12] in February 2005, which had over 900,000 downloads. The release introduced their theme system, moderation features, and a new front end and back end redesign.

During late March and early April 2005, Andrew Baio found at least 168,000 hidden articles on the WordPress.org website that were using a technique known as cloaking.[13] Mullenweg admitted accepting the questionable advertisement and removed all articles from the domain.[14]

After a somewhat quiet year, in October 2005 he announced he was leaving CNET[15] to focus on WordPress and related activities full time.
Matt @ WordCamp Bulgaria 2011

Several days later, on October 25, Akismet was made public to the world.[16] Akismet is a distributed effort to stop comment and trackback spam by using the collective input of everyone using the service.

WordPress.com stopped being invite-only and opened up to the world in November 2005.[17]

In December 2005 he announced Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com and Akismet. Automattic employed people who had contributed to the WordPress project, including lead developer Ryan Boren and WordPress MU creator Donncha O Caoimh. An Akismet licensing deal[18] and WordPress bundling[19] was announced with Yahoo! Small Business web hosting about the same time.

In January 2006 Mullenweg recruited former Oddpost CEO and Yahoo! executive Toni Schneider to join Automattic as CEO, bringing the size of the company to 5.

It was discovered in April 2006 through a Regulation D filing that Automattic raised approximately 1.1 million dollars in funding,[20] which Mullenweg addressed in his blog.[21] Investors were Polaris Ventures, True Ventures, Radar Partners, and CNET.

The first WordCamp conference in July 2006 was pulled together in 3 weeks, in the style of BarCamp, attracting over 300 people to the Swedish American Hall in San Francisco. The first WordCamp Argentina event was held on October 31, 2007 in Buenos Aires.

In March 2007 he was named #16 of the 50 most important people on the web by PC World,[22] reportedly the youngest on the list.[23]

In October 2007 Mullenweg acquired the Gravatar service[24] and was rumored to have turned down a US$200 million offer to buy his company Automattic.[25]

In January 2008 Automattic raised an additional US$29.5 million for the company from Polaris Venture Partners, True Ventures, Radar Partners, and the New York Times Company.[26] According to Mullenweg's blog the funding was a result of spurned acquisition offers months before and the decision to keep the company independent. At the time the company had 18 employees.[27] One of the reported plans for the funding was in a forum service called TalkPress.[28]

In July 2008 Mullenweg was featured on the cover of Linux Journal wearing a Fight Club t-shirt.[29] Later that month a San Francisco Chronicle story put him on the cover of the business section and noted he still drove a Chevrolet Lumina and WordPress.com was ranked #31 on Alexa with 90 million monthly page views.[30]

September 2008 brought more press coverage with Mullenweg being named to the Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30 by Inc. Magazine[31] and one of the 25 Most Influential People on the Web by BusinessWeek,[32] again the youngest on BusinessWeek's list.

In 2009 Mullenweg was named an honorary patron of the University Philosophical Society for his contributions to information technology and culture.

In January 2009 Mullenweg told USA Today that Automattic was profitable, had 35 employees, had gotten an office on Pier 38 in San Francisco, and had landed CNN as a client for WordPress.com.[33]

It was reported in May 2009 that due to Mullenweg's unwillingness to comply with Chinese censorship WordPress.com was effectively blocked by China's Golden Shield Project.[34]

source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Mullenweg

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