For years Automattic’s WordPress.com has allowed bloggers to make money with ads. The best option thus far has been Google AdSense. Now WordPress is saying “you deserve better than AdSense.” Now Automattic has launched a new service called WordAds. There are over 50,000 WordPress-powered blogs launching every day. These blogs will soon be able to place ads on their websites through Automattic’s partnership with Federated Media. [WordPress Blog]

Hackers have gained root-access to several WordPress.com servers this morning. Some of the VIP customers’ source code was accessible by the hackers. WordPress.com VIP customers were alerted a “code red” and passwords/API keys were changed.

This past September Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) announced that Windows Live Spaces would be migrated over to WordPress.com. Today they have announced that over 500,000 Windows Live Spaces blogs have been successfully imgrated over to WordPress.com. As part of Microsoft’s partnership with WordPress.com parent company Automattic, Microsoft Messenger Connect can be used by WordPress.com users to share their blog posts with Messenger. [Windows Team Blog]

Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com has added SMS text messaging support for the blog platform (note: this service is only available to U.S. WordPress.com users as of right now). There are free WordPress.com SMS features and there are paid features.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) and WordPress.com has announced that Windows Live Space users will now be using the WordPress.com blogging platform. WordPress.com has made the migration easy using a brand a new import. Windows Live Spaces users will have the option to import all posts, comments, and photos to the WordPress.com platform.

Wordpress.com has introduced two new features to their blog service: a like button and reflagging.  The new features can be accessed through a Like menu item in the admin bar at the top of WordPress.com pages.

Blog hosting website WordPress.com went offline for about 110 minutes. This caused 10.2 million blogs to go offline and deprived them of receiving about 5.5 million pageviews. The reason why WordPress.com went offline was because of a core router change by a data center. All of the data is safe, but just could not be served. “The entire team was on pins and needles trying to get your blogs back as soon as possible. I hope it will be much longer than four years before we face a problem like this again,” stated WordPress founding developer Matt Mullenweg. [WP Company Blog]

Automattic has acquired After The Deadline, a WordPress plugin startup company.  After The Deadline designed a solid grammar and spelling plugin for WordPress.  Matt Mullenweg, the chief developer of WordPress called up Raphael Mudge, the only After The Deadline employee to find out what it would take to buy out his entire company.

The deal was made this past July and now After The Deadline was made accessible for all WordPress.com users.  Automattic has around $30 million in funding and purchased the blo.gs pinging service from Yahoo! this past April.  Automattic also bought out PollDaddy in October and Intense Debate in September.