The Tavern Wizard Revealed: It's Matt Mullenweg

Well, the great Oz has revealed himself, a prediction that many historically professed to be true but one that I couldn’t as easily see myself.

So I asked the question publicly: Who really is the man behind the curtain over at WP Tavern?

It’s been revealed: Matt Mullenweg is the one who bought, and now owns, WP Tavern. It was also revealed that he’s also who’s financed the future of WeblogToolsCollection as well as Mark Ghosh took his leave.

So what’s the plan? Archive WBTC and make Tavern a “third place” for community:

What’s the plan? Currently: put WLTC into archive mode, and reboot Tavern to be a “third place” for the WP community.

Matt even mentioned that there’s a possibility, long-term, that it might be rolled up into an official WP.org news source.

As usual, there have been both a ton of public praise as well some who have voiced their concern about whether this will present a conflict of interest of sorts for independent and unbiased reporting:

However, I think it's impossible for @wptavern to be an objective news source now. But hopefully a good community spot.

— Brian Krogsgard (@Krogsgard) May 21, 2013

(It’s worth taking a look at least the conversation thread here as well.)

So the question is: Does this create conflict and tension? And perhaps as a follow-up question, do you think that WP Tavern can come back in full-swing?

For starters it’s a great win for Jeffro personally, regardless of where the chips land; being “funded” or at least salaried by Audrey Capital (the entity that has purchased WP Tavern and WLTC) allowed Jeff to “leave his full time job” to pursue this now with passion and attention.

There are very few who can share how freeing that is to be able to put food on the table and blog full time. It’s a dream that many people have but few people have ever really tasted.

The same goes for Mark Ghosh who now can breathe a big sigh of relief knowing that the community and great content will live on for a very long time, if not forever.

Want to toss your “hat” into the ring? What are your thoughts on the Wizard Reveal?