This week, the team at Automattic launched official statistics about the growth of WordPress.com during 2013, and the numbers are very impressive.From the number of new blogs launched to the number of posts published, WordPress experienced double-digit growth during the previous 12 months. Keep in mind, these statistics are for the WordPress-hosted, WordPress.com, not the self-hosted WordPress.org.

WordPress.com 2013 by the Numbers

In 2013, 13.7 million new blogs were created using WordPress.com, which is a 36% increase over the 10 million new blogs created on WordPress.com in 2012---not bad for a maturing tool. The number of posts published during 2013 (489.3 million) also increased by 12 times over 2012. WordPress.com also had a banner year in published comments (667.7 million in total, 12 comments per second) and likes (95.4 million).

Behind the Scenes at WordPress.com in 2013

Not only was 2013 a busy year for publishing and commenting on content via WordPress.com, but it was also a busy year for theme design. WordPress.com launched 77 new themes. During 2013, Automattic also gave the WordPress.com dashboard a revamped look and added two-factor authentication to keep WordPress.com accounts secure.In addition, Automattic rolled out and/or enhanced tools and features like new social sharing options, Simplenote and Markdown. The company hired 101 new employees to keep up with the growth demands and acquired Cloudup during 2013. At the same time, WordPress was active in fighting censorship and DMCA takedown notice fraud in two separate lawsuits.

What People Blogged about on WordPress.com in 2013

Throughout 2013, the top ten topics on WordPress.com blogs (by number of posts published) were diverse. Photography took the top spot with 328,763 posts. In tenth place was Food with 105,528 posts (less than half the number of posts about photography). The top ten topics on WordPress.com during 2013 were photography, video, politics, music, life, news, art, love, humor, and food.

The Future of WordPress

In March of 2012, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg discussed the future of WordPress at SXSW. He named three things that will be the key areas of focus for his team: long-form content, content curation and native advertising. The statistics above show that the future for WordPress is bright as does this April 2012 infographic filled with WordPress statistics.When the infographic was published, 72.4 million websites (and blogs) around the world were powered by WordPress with a 50/50 split between WordPress.com and WordPress.org. Given the 38% new blog growth rate that WordPress.com experienced in 2013, WordPress is safely in position to continue to increase its dominance as the most popular content management system.Image: Heisenberg Media