The Next Empire: WordPress

Business people always ask me “But what can I do with a blog?” Dougal of geek ramblings has posted a list of high-profile organizations that use WordPress (a blog engine) to power websites, news portals and commerce. Do the names Harvard, CNN and the Wall St. Journal ring a bell?

Let’s start with WSJ. They use WordPress to fire up All Things Digital, news, analysis and opinion about the digital revolution featuring heavy hitters like Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher.

Harvard has created a portal using WordPress-MU for students to create their own blogs. WordPress-MU allows you to run thousands of blogs or websites with just one software installation.

Let’s say your blog-powered website gets really popular. Consider Anousheh Ansari, the first blogger from space. Or CNN. For sites that experience more than 500,000 views a month or spikes in the millions, there’s WordPress-VIP.

Guess what: blogging’s not so niche anymore. It’s not just personal rants and self-promotion. In fact, many of the most popular destinations on the web are powered by WordPress.

Why are big corporations and news portals adopting WordPress and other blog engines for major audience sites?

• Simple to install and customize
• Effortless content creation
• Lots of free and low-cost software, plugins, themes and widgets

Evidence is building that WordPress is poised to become the next software empire to roll across the world’s laptops, changing the way businesses think about websites, commerce and communication.

Thanks again to Dougal for researching this important topic. See his list here.