Getty Pictures
Tumblr will lose a majority of its product-minded workers by the tip of this yr, in line with the CEO of the corporate that owns it. However regardless of a lately leaked memo quoting Tennyson’s “higher to have cherished and misplaced” line, the CEO believes they’re “establishing Tumblr for fulfillment on this subsequent chapter.”
Web statesman and Waxy.org proprietor Andy Baio posted early Thursday what was, on the time, “apparently an inner Automattic memo making the rounds on Tumblr” to Threads. The memo, written to workers at WordPress.com father or mother firm Automattic, which purchased Tumblr from Verizon’s media arm in 2019, is titled or subtitled “You win otherwise you study.” The posted memo states {that a} majority of the 139 workers engaged on product and advertising and marketing at Tumblr (in a workforce apparently named “Bumblr”) will “change to different divisions.” These working in “Happiness” (Automattic’s buyer assist and repair division) and “T&S” (belief and security) would stay.
“We’re on the level the place after 600+ person-years of effort put into Tumblr because the acquisition in 2019, we now have not gotten the anticipated outcomes from our effort, which was to have income and utilization above its earlier peaks,” the posted memo reads. After quotes and anecdotes about love, loss, mountaineering, and studying on the journey, the memo notes that no one can be let go and that workforce members could make a ranked checklist of their high three most popular assignments elsewhere inside Automattic.
Afterward Thursday, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg confirmed the authenticity of what was an inner weblog publish and commented on sections of it. Mullenweg famous that “we have labored on Tumblr for 4 years with ~200 folks full-time, and spent nicely north of $100M above income attempting to show the location round, nevertheless it hasn’t but. That sucks, however I additionally need to acknowledged the hassle of everybody who tried and gave their finest.”
Mullenweg notes that the Tumblr workforce had been instructed “for over a yr” that they could possibly be switched from Tumblr to revenue-generating points of the corporate. These switching will seemingly achieve this by the tip of 2023. The Tumblr workforce had “truly been performing rather well of their work,” however with out profit-generating outcomes. “We have additionally discovered a ton engaged on Tumblr that I feel will make our different merchandise higher,” he writes.
Mullenweg later posts what he says was the rest of the publish not seen within the authentic screenshot, relating to Tumblr’s future:
We’re shifting from the mode of “surging” on Tumblr with tons of individuals to get it to thrilling development, to engaged on how we will run Tumblr in essentially the most clean and environment friendly method. Fairly wonderful issues within the social and messaging house have been completed with small groups, so I’m truly fairly curious to see a smaller and extra centered Tumblr’s efficiency in 2024.
Mullenweg additionally notes that the unique publish contained particulars of Automattic’s deliberate acquisition of Texts.com, introduced on October 24, and he thanks “whoever shared the screenshot” for trimming it to keep away from that. Within the feedback (“Asks”) of his publish, Mullenweg notes that, in distinction to negativity lately directed towards employees at Tumblr, the “inventive, supportive a part of Tumblr is among the finest locations on the Web.”
“I’ve skilled moments of magnificence and connection right here that I have never anyplace else, and it is why I like Tumblr deeply. It is why all the workforce cares, and we’ll do our greatest to assist and permit that a part of Tumblr to not simply survive, however thrive,” Mullenweg wrote.
From two folks to $1.1B, and now this
Tumblr began because the undertaking of David Karp and Marco Arment, the latter of whom would go on to develop Instapaper and grow to be a vocal Apple commenter and podcaster. The phenomenon of microblogging, or “Tumblelogs,” low-commitment private blogs that contained snippets of textual content, pictures, audio, or different ephemera, had been formed right into a product that launched in early 2007. The corporate was acquired for $1.1 billion in 2013, the biggest acquisition of CEO Marissa Mayer’s tenure at Yahoo, with an uncommon press launch that famous Yahoo “Guarantees to not screw it up.” (Ars profiled a UX design chief at Tumblr round that point.)
“Yahoo might not have screwed Tumblr up,’ nevertheless it has hemorrhaged cash,” learn Ars’ subsequent headline about Tumblr in 2016, quickly after Yahoo wrote down one other $482 million on its acquisition. Verizon gave Tumblr a attempt in 2017, buying each the microblog service and its father or mother Yahoo for $4.48 billion, including AOL, and calling the entire thing “Oath.” Six months later, Oath unveiled its grand technique: eradicating all grownup content material from what was, from the start, a quite sex-infused, LGTBTQ+-friendly, porn-tolerant website. Efforts to make use of automated content material elimination programs had been so hapless as to generate mockery. By 2019, Verizon was actively in search of a purchaser for Tumblr; Pornhub steered its curiosity, if maybe just for headlines.
Verizon offloaded Tumblr to Automattic in 2019 for purportedly lower than $20 million, taking over 200 workers. CEO Matt Mullenweg on the time referred to as Tumblr “one of many internet’s most iconic manufacturers,” and stated he supposed to keep up the grownup content material ban and hoped the location would complement Automattic’s different merchandise, like WooCommerce, Jetpack, Longreads, and others.
Taylor Swift, authorities spooks, and artwork
In late 2022, Mullenweg tweeted that Tumblr app downloads had been up 57–58 % on iOS and Android. Across the similar time, Tumblr introduced again nudity however saved “sexually specific pictures” at bay. A summer time 2023 main redesign aimed to make Tumblr simpler to make use of and introduced it consistent with the final look of different social networks. Throughout a livestreamed Q&A about Tumblr in July, Mullenweg stated Tumblr was shedding $30 million per yr.
Nonetheless, speaking about Tumblr’s future in August 2023 on an Night Customary podcast, Mullenweg appeared optimistic about its attain into youthful markets, its vibrant LGBTQ+ neighborhood, some obscure backend AI potentialities, and the way a Twitter exodus may feed Tumblr’s regrowth. (Even when Tumblr’s customers did not essentially invite these customers in.)
As quoted in TechCrunch, Mullenweg instructed the podcast that he thought-about Tumblr not a lot a successor to Twitter, however a change of tempo. “You typically hear folks say they need to do much less social media, however you virtually by no means hear folks say they need to weblog much less… What’s it about running a blog, that they really feel like provides to their life or is a beneficial job, or beneficial use of time, that possibly they’re not getting from extra conventional social media? … Like I stated, we’re making Tumblr for artwork and artists. I haven’t heard anybody say I’d love much less artwork in my life.”
The cultural attain and cachet of Tumblr has lengthy exceeded its enterprise prospects. Taylor Swift superfans (Swifties) maintain in excessive regard the time in 2014 when Swift reblogged a fan account and went on, at size, about simply how a lot she cherished the autumn season. Edward Snowden’s leak of extremely labeled paperwork in 2013 spurred authorities surveillance higher-ups to create an “IC on the Report” tumblog, a really odd match that in some way continues to today. Numerous artists, fashions, writers, and different creatives, together with limitless memes, obtained their begin on a website that may at all times be tough to clarify to those that have not skilled it.
This publish was up to date on Novomber 9 at 6:55 pm ET to notice Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg’s publish acknowledging the leaked memo’s authenticity and his response to it. The headline was additionally modified.
