I'm super excited to have the Tumblr team and product join the Automattic family. We've been evolving Automattic to be more of a Berkshire Hathaway-inspired model and businesses with a lot of autonomy, and this continues that trend.
I was very impressed with the engagement and activity Tumblr has continued to have, and I hope that with this new ownership and investment the product will blossom.
According to this article [1], you plan to move Tumblr's backend onto WordPress. Considering that Tumblr's infra stores over 1 trillion distinct product objects, this would be one of the most technically ambitious migrations in history. Can you share any thoughts of how it will be approached? Will you be pruning/purging old content or inactive users?
For the ones that don't know you, you are the CEO and founder, Matt Mullenweg [0].
I am curious to hear more about the: "...to be more of a Berkshire Hathaway-inspired model and businesses with a lot of autonomy". Could you share some details?
Thanks for building Wordpress. When I used to be a prolific blogger, it was my platform of choice.
It would be nice if investment in Tumblr is made to create a privacy focused social network for those who have or would like to remove FB from our worlds.
I wish you and the team the best of luck. Tumblrs first downfall was partly because the autonomy it was given to a team that had no idea how to grow the business. Karp had zero idea how to grow the product or the revenues past the initial vision. D'onofrio is an operator, likely not the best fit for leading a vision of what a new Tumblr with a new mandate should be.
So, the real question is: are the censorship policies going to be reversed?
To be specific, is adult content going to be kosher on Tumblr again? Because if not, I'd have very little faith in the platform (and I do have an account there).
>Mr. Mullenweg said his company intends to maintain the existing policy that bans adult content. He said he has long been a Tumblr user and sees the site as complementary to WordPress.com. “It’s just fun,” he said of Tumblr. “We’re not going to change any of that.”
It is worth noting that Tumblr was an indirect acquisition by Verizon when they bought Yahoo in 2017.
It seems to have had stable unique views up until Aug-Sep 18 [1]. At some point it suffered from country-wide bans in places such as Indonesia. The country bans coupled with a ban from the iOS App store [2] caused direct downward pressure on viwership. This has led to a rapid drop in viewership in the months after [3]. Considering the amount of legislation towards telecom companies and the potential risk to the Verizon brand by proxy, it was imperative that the company would sell Tumblr.
Due to the current political environment in the US, it is unlikely that Automattic will open the gates that partially made Tumblr what it was in the 17-18 era for the next 3-6 months, that is unless they take a very conservative take on reviewing that kind of content prior to it being posted.
Surprised by this news. Tumblr has lost a ton of momentum since its policy change, and the site itself doesn't have a very strong "brand" audience attached to it.
Fun fact: I can't recall the last time I either opened a Tumblr link or saw one in the wild. But maybe that's just me.
> Mr. Mullenweg said his company intends to maintain the existing policy that bans adult content. He said he has long been a Tumblr user and sees the site as complementary to WordPress.com. “It’s just fun,” he said of Tumblr. “We’re not going to change any of that.”
Not surprising, but in light of that statement one wonders what the value proposition of this acquisition is aside from an acquihire.
They haven't published a sale price. Doubt very much if Matt Mullenweg over paid for it. If the price is low enough that Tumblr cash flows or close to it with existing advertising revenue then it was a pretty smart purchase.
Automattic will probably be much more effective at handling Tumblr since they have experience with content platforms. Whereas for Verizon, Tumblr was way, way outside their core competency.
It was always a shame at how Verizon seemed to mismanage Tumblr so it's exciting that Tumblr may become relevant again!
I know there are a lot of nay sayers in this thread about the viability of this acquistion but consider this:
> Even still, Matt says Tumblr’s user base is, “several times larger than [WordPress.com].”
I don't know what Automattic paid exactly, but the story speculates that:
> Dan Primack of Axios is reporting a “source familiar” put the price, “well south of $20 million.”
So even if Tumblr is plateaued or declining still, it has several magnitudes of declining (for lack of a better term maybe?) before it even hits the same size as wordpress.com
Using the $20 Million Dollar as the ceiling here, all they would need to do is convert:
- four million users to their $5 month plan to make back $20 million dollars
- two million five hundred thousand users to the $8 a month plan to make $20 million dollars
- eight hundred thousand users to their $25 dollar a month plan to make $20 million dollars
- forty five thousand users to their $45 dollar a month ecommerce plan to make $20 million dollars
Now, if you figure they'll likely monetize some of these users on a wide variety of these plans, the numbers start to pan out quite quickly. This doesn't count things like ad revenue on free tiers, for instance.
Why are you comparing the cost of a single month against a one-off purchase price? I have no idea what Tumblr's churn rate is, but if they can hold onto that $5/mo user for a year, they only need 333k to make back $20m -- or 50,000 to make back $3m.
Tumblr is in a free fall for years, especially after last december. What is there for wordpress to take? the domain name? it's not that great ;) Maybe it's worth it to convert the few remaining blog owners?
I don't think tumblr is a valuable brand name, most of its adult blogs have moved to twitter and newtumbl, and judging from google trends that was ~50% of the searches.
Anyway automattic seems a good fit , but i hope they didn't pay too much for it.
As someone who used Tumblr more like Dribbble and not for 'adult' content, I think this is a great move. I like Automattic as a company and I trust Matt will find a way to make Tumblr relevant again for creators without having to resort to the LCTG - lowest common traffic generator.
For me the most important aspect of this acquisition is that Automattic is a fully remote company. Tumblr's office space in New York City must be very expensive, I wonder if they're getting rid of it and transition everyone to remote.
CW Old man comment: I tried to use tumblr years ago but the UI was so baffling I quickly gave up. Specifically: I never knew what would happen if I clicked on something. Does this “favorite” the post? Reblog it? Take me to the users page? How do I see the original post page (not the reblog)? How do I see the 6000 people who responded to this post?
Maximal violation of principal of least surprise. I could never figure anything out so I gave up.
Two things I loved about Tumblr that were very much not the social aspect (something about the community did just never work for me) were the stupid easy to use publishing tools and simple template language. I may have made some 600 of those site templates over the years and it was FUN.
Later design changes tried to push the social thing more to the front (which, again, idgaf about) and so I left. But it'd pretty cool to start seeing SOME of that in wp, which is in this kinda weird middle spot right now where it's not hard to work with but enough of a chore to pay someone to do it for you.
Price has tumbld to $3M apparently. At this price the original founder could buy it back. Despite their shenanigans they could reengage their users (including the adult themed ones)
[+] [-] photomatt|6 years ago|reply
I was very impressed with the engagement and activity Tumblr has continued to have, and I hope that with this new ownership and investment the product will blossom.
[+] [-] evanelias|6 years ago|reply
[1] https://poststatus.com/automattic-has-purchased-tumblr/
[+] [-] knd775|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonebrunozzi|6 years ago|reply
I am curious to hear more about the: "...to be more of a Berkshire Hathaway-inspired model and businesses with a lot of autonomy". Could you share some details?
Thanks for building Wordpress. When I used to be a prolific blogger, it was my platform of choice.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Mullenweg
[+] [-] MDWolinski|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] levi0214|6 years ago|reply
Could you give us more information about this, since Pornhub once said they wanted to acquire Tumblr.
[+] [-] fouc|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lesdeuxmagots|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomjen3|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tus88|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justinator|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zuuow|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tiagok|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] PhasmaFelis|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] donohoe|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] webwanderings|6 years ago|reply
The heydays of "blogging" was/is all BS.
[+] [-] BitwiseFool|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] romwell|6 years ago|reply
To be specific, is adult content going to be kosher on Tumblr again? Because if not, I'd have very little faith in the platform (and I do have an account there).
[+] [-] knd775|6 years ago|reply
>Mr. Mullenweg said his company intends to maintain the existing policy that bans adult content. He said he has long been a Tumblr user and sees the site as complementary to WordPress.com. “It’s just fun,” he said of Tumblr. “We’re not going to change any of that.”
[+] [-] hi5eyes|6 years ago|reply
instagram and tiktok are where kids are building their brands now
the nsfw sphere is on twitter/reddit
tumblr is/has been dead for years
[+] [-] macintux|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Gpetrium|6 years ago|reply
It seems to have had stable unique views up until Aug-Sep 18 [1]. At some point it suffered from country-wide bans in places such as Indonesia. The country bans coupled with a ban from the iOS App store [2] caused direct downward pressure on viwership. This has led to a rapid drop in viewership in the months after [3]. Considering the amount of legislation towards telecom companies and the potential risk to the Verizon brand by proxy, it was imperative that the company would sell Tumblr.
Due to the current political environment in the US, it is unlikely that Automattic will open the gates that partially made Tumblr what it was in the 17-18 era for the next 3-6 months, that is unless they take a very conservative take on reviewing that kind of content prior to it being posted.
[1] [3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/261925/unique-visitors-t... [2] https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/17/18100156/tumblr-apple-ap...
[+] [-] carbocation|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcintyre1994|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skilled|6 years ago|reply
Fun fact: I can't recall the last time I either opened a Tumblr link or saw one in the wild. But maybe that's just me.
[+] [-] robbiet480|6 years ago|reply
[0]: https://twitter.com/danprimack/status/1161038705295089664?s=...
[+] [-] minimaxir|6 years ago|reply
Not surprising, but in light of that statement one wonders what the value proposition of this acquisition is aside from an acquihire.
[+] [-] rmason|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] opportune|6 years ago|reply
It was always a shame at how Verizon seemed to mismanage Tumblr so it's exciting that Tumblr may become relevant again!
[+] [-] no_wizard|6 years ago|reply
> Even still, Matt says Tumblr’s user base is, “several times larger than [WordPress.com].”
I don't know what Automattic paid exactly, but the story speculates that:
> Dan Primack of Axios is reporting a “source familiar” put the price, “well south of $20 million.”
So even if Tumblr is plateaued or declining still, it has several magnitudes of declining (for lack of a better term maybe?) before it even hits the same size as wordpress.com
Using the $20 Million Dollar as the ceiling here, all they would need to do is convert:
- four million users to their $5 month plan to make back $20 million dollars
- two million five hundred thousand users to the $8 a month plan to make $20 million dollars
- eight hundred thousand users to their $25 dollar a month plan to make $20 million dollars
- forty five thousand users to their $45 dollar a month ecommerce plan to make $20 million dollars
Now, if you figure they'll likely monetize some of these users on a wide variety of these plans, the numbers start to pan out quite quickly. This doesn't count things like ad revenue on free tiers, for instance.
[+] [-] cf498|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 9nGQluzmnq3M|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buboard|6 years ago|reply
I don't think tumblr is a valuable brand name, most of its adult blogs have moved to twitter and newtumbl, and judging from google trends that was ~50% of the searches.
Anyway automattic seems a good fit , but i hope they didn't pay too much for it.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=tumblr
[+] [-] lesinski|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidwitt415|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] riffraff|6 years ago|reply
I wish them the best of luck.
[+] [-] sct202|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jotm|6 years ago|reply
https://blog.pinboard.in/2017/06/pinboard_acquires_delicious...
[+] [-] ekc|6 years ago|reply
Near-absolute free speech, within the means of the law, with really odd exceptions.
[+] [-] JBReefer|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m0zg|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qnk|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sequoia|6 years ago|reply
Maximal violation of principal of least surprise. I could never figure anything out so I gave up.
[+] [-] chiefalchemist|6 years ago|reply
How long before someone else sees opportunity in current limited amount of choice for blogging consumers?
[+] [-] Alir3z4|6 years ago|reply
https://www.gonevis.com
[+] [-] inscionent|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ihuman|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cfv|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buboard|6 years ago|reply