Tumblr Failed to Become Profitable and Announces Restructuring

Tumblr He returned from the dead and found that he had no place in this century. After a brief revival 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.

The leaked post reveals why Automattic, the owner of Tumblr and WordPress, made the difficult decision. Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic, noted that after the tremendous efforts of hundreds of employees they were unable to generate income exceeding previous periods. As a result, the company will reorganize to prioritize other projects.

“We learned a lot on the trip and honed skills that we can use to solve other problems,” the statement said. “As we’ve said before, if this doesn’t work out, we’ll have a backup plan and set up the business so we don’t have to lay anyone off. We just need to think and decide what else we should focus our energy on together.”

Automattic invited Tumblr employees to choose three company projects in which they would like to participate. The leaked notice mentions that 139 people will move to other areas. Mullenweg confirmed Edge that these employees belong to product development, marketing and other departments.

What’s next for Tumblr?

Tumblr will operate with a skeleton staff of support, security, and moderation engineers. Although the platform could not be raised, Automattic has no plans to close it. Mullenweg wrote in his blog that they will be paying particular attention to the changes they make in 2024. “We will try to make each of them useful and improve the base of the site,” he said.

Auto bought Tumblr in 2019 for $3 million. Mullenweg was confident he could right the ship after the 2018 fiasco. However, four years and a $100 million investment later, the company has failed to do so. The manager assures that this is a matter of strategy.

“The team has done a very good job, so we won’t let people go,” he said in a previous post. “They just didn’t get the results, which usually means we’re working on the wrong thing and we should try something new,” Mullenweg said.

Some of The experiments were not well received by the community.. During the Q&A session, one user expressed dissatisfaction with options like Tumblr Live, accusing the company of wanting to turn the platform into TikTok. “There are some really popular things that you’ve removed or made obsolete (old tags, blog themes, avatars, etc.) and a lot of people want them back,” he said.

With that in mind, Automattic’s CEO responded that Tumblr Live hasn’t gained the traction it expected, so they’ll be focusing on the core experience in 2024. Other features like Blaze or subscriptions also don’t work because there isn’t enough income to pay for it. costs, wages 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 in crisis, the decision to ban porn remains in effect. Taking this opportunity, the user asked Matt Mullenweg if there was an option to override the veto. The manager replied that on an artistic level it was allowed, but explicit sexual content was out of the question.

One of the reasons Tumblr can’t go back to what it was before is because Adult content cannot be monetized. To begin with, the App Store and Google Play are against pornography, so they will not accept the application. In addition to this, credit card companies such as Mastercard and Visa do not accept payments, so cryptocurrencies will be your only option.

“If you want to launch an adult social network in 2022, it should only be available on the web on iOS and side loading on Android, receive payments in cryptocurrency, be able to convert cryptocurrency for business transactions without being blocked. Also do a great job of age and identity verification and compliance to stay out of jail, protect the identity of your users, and make a lot of money,” Mullenweg mentioned in a previous post.