WordPress parent company Automattic has bought the blo.gs pinging and blog trackback service from Yahoo. Financial details weren’t disclosed, but Automattic CEO Toni Schneider said the deal-making process was “refreshingly quick.” Aside from feature upgrades, Automattic will make minimal changes to the way blo.gs operates (via Matt Mullenweg).

Yahoo bought blo.gs back in 2005. At the time, it tracked over 8 million blogs and was one of only a few “ping” services; now ping aggregators like Ping-o-Matic, open ping servers like Weblogs.com and even Google let bloggers sign up for pinging to alert search engines and readers when new content gets posted. And there’s a glut of blog content out there—the WSJ reports that there are more than 20 million bloggers in the U.S. today, 2 million of whom are actually profiting from their posts.

Photo Credit: Somewhat Frank

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