Introduction:
Due to Tumblr’s ongoing financial difficulties, the CEO of WordPress.com, Matt Mullenweg, stated this week that his company would be moving most of Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg at parent company Automattic. Following his acknowledgment and explanation of the significance of an internal letter that had leaked and revealed the team changes, Mullenweg had an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session on his own Tumblr blog, where he answered several inquiries regarding the future of Tumblr.
Here, the executive responded to queries regarding Tumblr’s future intentions for already-released products, such as Tumblr Live, as well as its policies, revenue strategies, and anticipated integration with ActivityPub, a decentralized social networking protocol that Mullenweg had previously stated was in the works.
TechCrunch’s Amanda Silberling first reported the reorganization of Tumblr, who said that 139 website employees would be transferred to other projects at Automattic. Automattic is the parent company of WordPress.com, Tumblr, Day One, Pocket Casts, WooCommerce, and several other apps and services, including the all-in-one texting app Texts.com, which was recently acquired.
However, Mullenweg’s AMA provided much more detail on the company’s operating strategy for Tumblr, the blogging platform it purchased from Verizon in 2019 for $3 million. Even though Yahoo previously paid over a billion dollars for the company, the acquisition price was great. However, the company is losing $30 million annually. That called for a reorganization.
The following are some of the most critical lessons Mullenweg learned during his AMA with Tumblr users, which provide insight into the platform’s plans through 2024.
When will there be personnel changes?
According to Mullenweg, the Tumblr team will change on December 31, 2023. As personnel is reallocated, he said the team will be given other projects at Automattic and permitted to rank their best three choices. The affected team is referred to internally as “Bumblr,” representing Tumblr’s product division.
He continued, saying that the Tumblr team had known for over a year that some would have to concentrate on other profitable projects if the company’s income didn’t increase, so the move was not unexpected.
WP.com, WooCommerce, Jetpack, Day One, Pocket Casts, WP VIP,.Org, Applied AI, Texts, self-serve advertising (Blaze), Newspack, Pressable, and Gravatar are the options available to Tumblr employees who are being transferred.
Why did some employees lose their jobs without getting reassigned?
Mullenweg acknowledged that the business, like many others, conducts performance reviews, occasionally resulting in employee terminations. Put differently, some staff were let go, but not due to Tumblr’s financial difficulties.
What constitutes success on Tumblr?
According to the WordPress executive, if Tumblr were to become famous, “everyone would hang out online,” and there would be “billion micro-communities.” He omitted specific details, such as the estimated cost, though.
What is Tumblr’s strategy for making money?
According to Mullenweg, Tumblr’s subscription service is now the most excellent method to help the website. For $29.99/year or $2.99/month, users can purchase the Tumblr Supporter badge or choose a correspondingly priced, ad-free option. Tumblr keeps more revenue when users subscribe via the web rather than the app store since it doesn’t have to pay app store commissions.
Nevertheless, just 27,000 (0.2%) of the 11.5 million monthly active users on Tumblr are subscribers. Mullenweg pointed out that Tumblr would do well if 10–20% of users subscribed. After that, he said, “We could run the site forever.”
Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg:
Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg [Source of Image: Techcrunch.com]
Furthermore, he claimed that with just 2,300 overall subscribers to that product, the Tumblr Supporter badge hasn’t been all that triumphant on its own.
Regarding a different query, Mullenweg proposed that Tumblr users give away subscriptions, encourage others to sign up and show support for the brands and advertisers that help Tumblr.
He also revealed certain upcoming TumblrMart modifications. Tumblr was only lucrative on a small scale, so it will probably have to “scale back the physical stuff” even though virtual goods and subscriptions will still be available. (As Mullenweg pointed out, the person in charge no longer wants to.)
Mullenweg seemed to be thinking of other methods to sustain Tumblr through ads in other comments.
Will Tumblr support WordPress.com blog migrations?
Regarding future intentions, the executive in question was a little mysterious, but he did mention that WordPress can import content and that Tumblr now offers a complete export option. Mullenweg acknowledged that transferring Tumblr blogs to WordPress.com would be “tricky,” but he also hinted that future technologies, such as artificial intelligence, will simplify it.
Is Tumblr Live going to close?
The executive suggested that Tumblr Live, a feature that allows users to stream videos live, might be eliminated. Tumblr will “streamline some of the extra things that were launched (like Live) that haven’t gotten the adoption we hoped for,” he stated in 2024.
As for Live, Mullenweg explicitly noted that it will be reevaluated in January 2024 as to “whether it should be a part of the Tumblr app anymore.” Mullenweg also said that Tumblr would “sunset or roll back some things we tried that didn’t work.”
How does Tumblr handle trolls?
Regarding Tumblr’s commercial future, the troll question was a little off-subject; instead, it addressed the site’s cultural future. Mullenweg stated that he thinks the percentage of “super trolls” on Tumblr is less than 0.5 percent. He acknowledged that they can still have a significant impact.
The business intends to expand its investment in Trust & Safety, which handles bots, trolling, attacks, and hate speech. Notwithstanding the staff changes, it will ban accounts that engage in these activities. He said it will also stop such trolls from creating new accounts and acting similarly.
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