WordPress.com and WordPress.org have a little more in common this morning, as Automattic has announced Jetpack, a bridge between the two WordPress related offerings. For those that still don’t know the difference, it’s as follows: WordPress.com is the blog hosting platform and WordPress.org is the open source and fully customizable CMS.
Apparently people on WordPress.org had been clamoring for more of the premium features of WordPress.com, and today founder Matt Mullenweg has decided to give them the “best of both worlds,” with Jetpack, a plugin that gives the self-hosted users all of the “goodies” of WordPress.com with the freedom (and GPL) that being a WordPress.com user affords.
Mullenweg explains his motivation behind the offering, “The dot.org users can get the best of WordPress.com without giving up control, which might be the future of open source in general.”
Jetpack will eventually replace 20/30 plugins with just one and WordPress has partnered up with Bluehost, Dreamhost, Go Daddy, Hostgator, Media Temple and Network Solutions to make this bundle available immediately with the one-click WordPress.org installs upon launch.
While premium features like Blackbird Pie still remain in the realm of WordPress.com users only, WordPress had combined eight of its most requested features into JetPack: Hovercards, Stats, After the Deadlines, Twitter widget, shortcodes, shortlinks, easy Facebook/Twitter/Wordpress sharing buttons and Latex.
Says Mullenweg, “If you’re on WordPress you’re part of the family, it shouldn’t matter if we host you or not.”