Mullenweg: Future of WordPress is ‘shorter, simpler, faster’

WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg reckons that the platform he founded is going to have to radically evolve if it’s going to succeed on tablets and smartphones.

The social media entrepreneur took to his blog to explain what changes the blogging platform, turned Content Management System (CMS) would have to make. In the post, he expresses his belief that WordPress “is seeing growth and innovation in being used as an application platform (I think we’re about a third of the way through that), and just now starting to embrace social and mobile”.

He calls this embracing of social and mobile “the fourth phase” of the platform’s evolution. He also claims that the platform isn’t afraid of entering a space that others already play in, because it “can learn from those that came before, as we always have, and good competitors drive you to be better”.

Mullenweg seems to think that WordPress’ best chance of thriving on mobile is by simplifying it drastically:

How we democratise publishing on that sort of platform will not and should not work like WordPress’ current dashboard does. It’s not a matter of a responsive stylesheet or incremental UX improvements, it’s re-imagining and radically simplifying what we currently do, thinking outside the box of wp-admin.

He compares those who are sceptical about the platform’s ability to play in the mobile space to the people deny that it is a legitimate CMS (a slightly surprising belief given that big names like Time and CNN use it as such).

Mullenweg cautions however that he doesn’t have all the answers just yet, although he thinks that by the time WordPress turns 10 in 2013, “the ways people experience and publish with WordPress will be shorter, simpler, faster.”