ReadWriteWeb

PollDaddy, the online polling and survey tool we use a lot here on RWW, has been acquired by Automattic, the company behind the popular WordPress blogging platform. This is Automattic's second major acquisition in a short time. Just three weeks ago, Automattic also announced the acquisition of IntenseDebate, a popular blog commenting plugin. Neither Automattic nor PollDaddy, an Irish startup, released the terms of the acquisition.

Automattic, the company behind the popular blogging platform Wordpress, has acquired IntenseDebate, a blog commenting plugin that works on almost every blogging platform. The price of the acquisition was not disclosed. This is the third major acquisition for Automattic after buying Gravatar in 2007 and BuddyPress in early 2008. Automattic promises that IntenseDebate will remain platform agnostic, just like Aksimet, Automattic's comment spam blocker.

Six Apart this morning launched a plugin for their MovableType blogging platform that aggregates and displays a user's activity from social web sites. Similar to FriendFeed, the Action Streams plugin displays things like, your latest posts to Twitter, images from Flickr, videos from YouTube, or events from Upcoming. The plugin is available this morning as a free download for MovableType 4.1 and currently supports 75 difference services.

Om Malik reported this evening that Automattic raised a $29.5 million Series B venture round led by Polaris Ventures, and including previous investors True Ventures and Radar Ventures. Perhaps the most intriguing part of the news is that the New York Times Company is also joining the round, making a strategic investment in Automattic, who are the creators of the widely used Wordpress blogging platform.