It’s been interesting to watch as they’ve had to differentiate WordPress.com itself by introducing new admin tools, etc. specifically for it in order to cater to the market they serve vs. the self-hosted WordPress space.

Fantastic to see someone else making the same observations I have. I was going to mention this in the article but couldn't think of a good way to say it. WordPress.com and the open source project are different products serving different needs for different markets. However, in many ways, both are intertwined with features.

I think of it like the capital Y. WordPress.org is going one way, WordPress.com is going another, but sometimes, the two overlap with the same feature. What I think is fascinating is how long WordPress.com and .org have been able to not be that far apart. However, with Reader and a slew of other specific .com features, the question I have is how long can both projects continue to intertwine before specific .com features force it to become it's own seperate entity, away from the development timeline of WordPress.org.