Pocket Casts will soon have a new home. Automattic, the parent company of Tumblr and WordPress.com, is buying the podcast app from a collective of public radio groups, including NPR and BBC Studios. Automattic didn’t disclose how much it will pay for Pocket Casts.
Co-founders Russell Ivanovic and Philip Simpson will remain in charge of the Pocket Casts team. It seems Automattic is already thinking about ways of incorporating the multi-platform app into its blogging tools.
“As part of Automattic, Pocket Casts will continue to provide you with the features needed to enjoy your favorite podcasts (or find something new),” a WordPress.com blog post states. “We will explore building deep integrations with WordPress.com and Pocket Casts, making it easier to distribute and listen to podcasts.”
Both blogs and podcasts use RSS feeds for distribution, so integrating the two platforms makes sense. Earlier this year, Spotify-owned Anchor teamed up with WordPress.com to turn written material into podcasts via text-to-speech tech. It’ll be interesting to see how the Pocket Casts deal factors into that partnership, if at all.