One of the most unassuming but influential players in Silicon Valley is Matt Mullenweg, the key developer of Wordpress blogging software and owner his associated anti-spam company Automattic.

Mullenweg spoke today at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco about new developments at WordPress, most significantly their new relationship with Sphere to create a WordPress feature called “possibly related” which will help readers identify similar content all across the WordPress network of blogs.

This will help low traffic blogs hit the radar screen when they right about topics of interest to the broader community, and will also help solve the current problems that are created when major blog players fail to link to other blogs, preferring to keep the precious Google pagerank within their limited networks of sites or those owned by associates or friends.

Mullenweg also said Wordpress now has some 168 million users, up from only 2 million just two years ago. WordPress is not generally mentioned in comparisons with Facebook, Myspace, or other major social network players as it should be. Matt Mullenweg and his team are definitely to be watched as they help usher in the new era of blogs and blogger.

Josh Lowensohn was there and has more details at WebWare.