tumblr He came back from the dead to discover that he has no place in this era. After a brief resurgence in mid-2022, the platform failed to become profitable, so will reduce your operations to a minimum. Most employees will look for other opportunities within the company, leaving only support staff in charge.
A leaked message exposes the reasons why Automattic, owner of Tumblr and WordPress, made the difficult decision. Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic, mentioned that after a colossal effort by hundreds of employees, they were not able to generate income that exceeded previous periods. Due to this, the company will carry out a reorganization to prioritize other projects.
“We have learned a lot on the trip and have honed skills that we can use to address other challenges,” the message mentions. “As we’ve talked about in the past, if it doesn’t work out, we’ll have a backup plan and set up the business, so we don’t need to lay anyone off. We just have to reflect and decide what else we should focus our energy on together.”
Automattic offered Tumblr employees the opportunity to choose three company projects they would like to participate in. The leaked notice mentions that 139 people will move to other areas. Mullenweg confirmed to The Verge that these workers belong to product development, marketing and other divisions.
What will happen to Tumblr?
Tumblr will operate with a skeleton made up of support, security and moderation engineers. Although the platform has not been able to lift, Automattic has no plans to close it. Mullenweg posted on his blog that they will take extra care with any changes they make in 2024. “We will try to make each one worthwhile and refine the foundation of the site,” she said.
Automatic bought Tumblr in 2019 for $3 million. Mullenweg was confident that he could right the ship after the 2018 debacle. However, after four years and a $100 million investment, the company has not succeeded. The manager assures that it is a matter of strategy.
“The team has done very well at their job, so we won’t let people go,” he said in a previous post. “They just haven’t gotten results, which usually means we’re working on the wrong things and should try something new,” Mullenweg said.
Some of The experiments have not been well received by the community. In a question and answer session, one user expressed discontent with options like Tumblr Live, accusing the company of wanting to turn the platform into a TikTok. “There are some really popular things that you’ve removed or made obsolete (older tags, blog themes, avatars, etc.) that a lot of people want back,” he said.
Given this, the head of Automattic responded that Tumblr Live did not have the adoption they expected, so they will focus on the core experience in 2024. Other functions such as Blaze or subscriptions are not working either, since the income is not enough to pay the costs. salaries or operations. According to Mullenweg, Of the 11.5 million monthly users, only 27,000 pay for Tumblr Supporter.
Porn will not return to the platform
Although Tumblr is going through a crisis, the decision to ban porn stands. Taking advantage of the occasion, a user asked Matt Mullenweg if there was any possibility of removing the veto. The manager responded that it is allowed on an artistic level, but explicit sexual content is out of the question.
One of the reasons Tumblr can’t go back to the way it was before is because adult content cannot be monetized. To begin with, the App Store and Google Play are against pornography, so they would not accept the application. In addition to this, credit card companies such as Mastercard and Visa do not accept payments, so the only option would be cryptocurrencies.
“If you want to start an adult social network in 2022, it should be web-only on iOS and do sideload on Android, receive payments in cryptocurrency, have a way to convert crypto for business operations without being blocked. Also do a lot of work on age and identity verification and compliance so you don’t go to jail, protect the identity of your users and make a lot of money,” Mullenweg mentioned in a previous post.