this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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It's not quite the end of Tumblr, but when management is supposedly sending memos with the Lord Tennyson quote about having "loved and lost," it doesn't look like there's much of a future.

Internet statesman and Waxy.org proprietor Andy Baio posted what is "apparently an internal Automattic memo making the rounds on Tumblr" to Threads. The memo, written to employees at WordPress.com parent company Automattic, which bought Tumblr from Verizon's media arm in 2019, is titled or subtitled "You win or you learn." The posted memo states that a majority of the 139 employees working on product and marketing at Tumblr (in a team apparently named "Bumblr") will "switch to other divisions." Those working in "Happiness" (Automattic's customer support and service division) and "T&S" (trust and safety) would remain.

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[–] Sabata11792@kbin.social 166 points 10 months ago (1 children)

We tried to warn you, yet you banned the porn anyways.

[–] krayj@sh.itjust.works 42 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Yeah, this was predicted by everyone, long in advance. The surprising thing here is how long they've managed to cling to life. I expected them to be deceased by now. I didn't think they'd last another three years, let alone five.

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago

They honestly didn't have a choice at the time. They were either going to have to completely moderate content, or get sued to bankruptcy for allowing CSAM all over their platform.

The double-edged sword of user-generated content is that a bunch of them are creeps and not participating to be creative.

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[–] obinice@lemmy.world 66 points 10 months ago

Well, they banned all the porn and destroyed their platform.

It was an intentional sabotage intended to destroy the company, yes? Nobody's stupid enough to not realise what would happen.

[–] theletterw@lemm.ee 38 points 10 months ago (3 children)

As someone who still uses Tumblr daily, I like how they’ve neglected they keep pissing around with the site itself which probably drives down engagement, or people purchasing things like the damn crabs or even the ad free premium. That layout they did to make it have the ugly sidebar was a terrible decision and I’m surprised they listened enough to roll it back. At one point I thought about supporting it with the premium but then they did that layout change, and briefly got rid of avatars on the dashboard… people like Tumblr for what it is. They don’t want it to look like Xitter or New Reddit. 😑

[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 13 points 10 months ago

Honestly if they'd just pulled a yearly donation drive like Ao3 they woulda done a lot better than all that fucking around

[–] slaacaa@lemmy.world 12 points 10 months ago

No, no you don’t understand, every social media has to be the exact same thing with a slightly different colored branding, consolidated in the ownership of 3 gigacompanies. Also, every social media should also have the same content, with screenshots and videos from the others.

I can’t wait to be able to upload my shorts to linkedin, post jobs on instagram, and send my friend money on twitter!

/s

[–] stopthatgirl7@kbin.social 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I’m still tiny to figure out why they thought Tumblr Live was a good idea. It seems like a waste of money to chase after…I’m not even sure who, Twitch? TikTok?

[–] theletterw@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Does that function even work? Like, do real Tumblr users even use it? Everything I see is just a reminder to snooze it again, or people who have accidentally accessed it and it crashes. Definitely a feature absolutely no one asked for.

[–] stopthatgirl7@kbin.social 2 points 10 months ago

No one I know who uses Tumblr likes it. I don’t know anyone who has done anything other than snooze it the second it turns back on. They really just did not know their user base and how tumblr is used.

[–] Satelllliiiiiiiteeee@kbin.social 21 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I really hope this isn't a sign of things to come with other Automattic companies. I'd hate to see Pocket Casts go away.

[–] flappy@lemm.ee 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Isn't Pocket Casts open source?

[–] mint_tamas@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Oh :( I’ll just quitely make an export of my subs though

[–] nucleative@lemmy.world 20 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I tried to be a tumblr user to learn what it's all about. I never got the feeling that engagement was authentic, it always felt like it was interacting with bots or posting into a black hole.

Somehow the Tumblr app on my phone needed my password again to login so I just deleted the app instead.

[–] atrielienz@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

The app is kind of bad. I respond to something someone reblogged and get comments I can't actually view on the original blog post. It happens to me all the time. Plus the porn bots. Always the porn bots.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's sad. I wish Tumblr had done better than Twitter.

[–] Emperor@feddit.uk 7 points 10 months ago

It still kinda is.

[–] Skkorm@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago

I like Tumblr, I hope it sticks around.

[–] pegaux@programming.dev 1 points 10 months ago

Tumblr aren't being laid off, they're just switching to other teams within Automattic.

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 1 points 10 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


The memo, written to employees at WordPress.com parent company Automattic, which bought Tumblr from Verizon's media arm in 2019, is titled or subtitled "You win or you learn."

The posted memo states that a majority of the 139 employees working on product and marketing at Tumblr (in a team apparently named "Bumblr") will "switch to other divisions."

After quotes and anecdotes about love, loss, mountain climbing, and learning on the journey, the memo notes that nobody will be let go and that team members can make a ranked list of their top three preferred assignments elsewhere inside Automattic.

The phenomenon of microblogging, or "Tumblelogs," low-commitment personal blogs that contained snippets of text, images, audio, or other ephemera, were shaped into a product that launched in early 2007.

CEO Matt Mullenweg at the time called Tumblr "one of the web's most iconic brands," and said he intended to maintain the adult content ban and hoped the site would complement Automattic's other products, like WooCommerce, Jetpack, Longreads, and others.

Edward Snowden's leak of highly classified documents in 2013 spurred government surveillance higher-ups to create an "IC on the Record" tumblog, a very odd fit that somehow continues to this day.


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