Tumblr is drastically cutting the team that runs the social network after failing to reverse its downslide.
The platform’s owner has confirmed the contents of a leaked memo detailing its plan to gut the blogging site.
Apart from a small group of employees in content moderation and customer support, Tumblr will lose the majority of the 139 workers that keep it running.
The affected staffers will be switched to other divisions at Tumblr’s parent company Automattic, which also owns blogging platform Wordpress, news aggregator Longreads and podcasts app Pocket Casts.
“This is me saying we've worked on Tumblr for four years with ~200 people full-time, and spent well north of $100M above revenue trying to turn the site around, but it hasn't yet,” CEO of Automattic, Matt Mullenweg, said in an internal memo shared on Tumblr.
A shorter version of the message had earlier been leaked by technologist and writer Andy Baio.
The shakeup comes during a year of mass tech and digital media layoffs as the twin industries grapple with a volatile advertising market and shifting user behaviour.
What is Tumblr?
Tumblr is a social blogging platform that lets users run wild with their creativity. Before Twitter introduced longer tweets, people were already sharing lengthy posts on Tumblr, along with images, gifs and videos.
Some tried to turn their blogs into expertly curated moodboards, while others sought out their tribes. This is where Tumblr thrived: By allowing you to follow likeminded users, the platform gave birth to a melting pot of internet subcultures.
There were hundreds of fandoms devoted to TV shows, books and movies, including Harry Potter and the fantasy trifecta of Supernatural, Doctor Who and Sherlock, known as “Superwholock.” Artists used Tumblr to share original work and interact with fans; other blogs like Fitspo and Food Porn wouldn’t seem out of place on Instagram or Reddit.
What went wrong?
The chaos at Tumblr won’t come as a surprise to its loyal users. The platform was crushed by a series of ill-fated ownership transfers in the 2010s when it switched hands from Yahoo to Verizon to Automattic.
Each subsequent parent failed to grasp why the internet’s quirky enclave resonated with people. In 2016, Yahoo wrote down $712 million of Tumblr's value after its advertising targets weren’t met. Verizon fumbled 30% of the site’s traffic due to a disastrous ban on adult content. Automattic then stepped in to acquire the site for just $3 million in 2019.
Still, there was a brief respite from the downturn. With lockdowns breeding isolation during the pandemic, bored former users returned to Tumblr. They discovered that some of the site’s most active users were still posting away, sheltered from the doom and gloom of other social media apps.
Like the ancient mosquito encased in amber in Jurassic Park, it was as if the internet relic had been preserved and was just awaiting a revival. More recently, Tumblr even tried to capitalise on the tumult at Twitter under Elon Musk.
But, the renaissance never came. According to Mr Mullenweg, Tumblr has been “burning cash” in the four years since it was acquired.
“We have not gotten the expected results from our effort, which was to have its revenue and usage above its previous peaks,” he explained in the memo.
What happens now?
Tthe majority of Tumblr’s staff are moving to other Automattic products, the platform will be operated by a small team that will focus on improving its core parts, Mullenweg said in his Tumblr post and the corresponding comments section.
The changes will take place on December 31, so from next year the priority will switch from “growth” to running Tumblr in the “most smooth and efficient manner".
This will result in some things being rolled back or ditched altogether, he said, adding that the company will reassess its livestreaming feature.
Tumblr will also continue to maintain and possibly even expand its trust and safety team, which tackles hate speech, bots and spam. Mullenweg said that although “super-trolls” comprised a very small “0.5 percent subset” of the platform’s total user base, they had an outsized impact on the site.
“Those bad actors will lose their accounts, and we will improve keeping them from registering new accounts right away and repeating the behavior,” he continued.
Asked if this was the start of an eventual shut down, Mullenweg replied:
“I'm advocating for this change because I think it has a good chance at success. I don't do anything hoping to fail.
“The good news is as well, since people leaving Tumblr aren't being laid off, they're just switching to other teams within Automattic, if something doesn't work or breaks we can always pull them back in to work on it.”
