
Tumblr the Day After - feross
https://ma.tt/2019/08/tumblr-the-day-after/
======
pixelmonkey
"Automattic is still a startup — I’m sure there are deep-pocketed private
equity firms that could have outbid us, but the most likely outcome then would
have been an “asset” getting chopped up and sold for parts. [...] Instead,
Tumblr has a new chance to redefine itself in 2019 and beyond."

I think Matt is right to point out the real story here. Automattic is simply
the right home for Tumblr. Perhaps similarly to how SmugMug is the right home
for Flickr.

Automattic is a company with a commitment to the open web and to effortless
digital publishing. That was Tumblr's original vision, too, before it got lost
in in the Yahoo/Oath/Verizon behemoth.

Automattic is a company with a long-term vision for what the open web means
and how to monetize it so that valuable services can simplify lives for site
operators, at scale. Just think of how many blogs and sites (and businesses)
Automattic has enabled via WordPress.com, WooCommerce, etc. They can apply
that same know-how to Tumblr's community, no matter how neglected it might
have been in the Verizon era.

Verizon probably had no clue what to do with Tumblr as an asset, and I am sure
they considered doing an orderly wind-down to focus on their core. This was a
much classier alternative.

As Matt mentioned, Verizon does $130B in annual revenue. Tumblr was probably a
strange distraction for them and had no chance of moving their KPIs as a
business.

Automattic's acquisition of it was probably the best possible outcome, for
Tumblr's technical & management team, for Tumblr's community, and, most
importantly, for its future potential impact on site operators and independent
web publishers everywhere.

~~~
munchbunny
100% agree that of the list of realistic outcomes, Tumblr going to Automattic
is one of the best possible outcomes.

That said, and I know this is said a lot, but I really wish our industry would
stop trying to label everything a "startup". Automattic was founded in 2005
and has 1000 employees. It's not a startup, it's a mature medium size tech
company. Its problems are not startup problems, they're mature medium size
tech company problems. Automattic isn't even a clear underdog considering the
dominance of WordPress.

To be clear, that's not a pejorative: Automattic kicked ass, and Automattic
deserves its current success. But the phrasing is a sticking point for me in
how people talk about tech companies because it ends up feeding into how we
perceive working at these companies. When I was job searching, I saw job
postings regularly where "startup" or "like a startup" are used to invoke a
cultural image for companies that are already post-growth-stage.

~~~
samnwa
This is really just shorthand for saying "our employees don't hate working at
our company as much as the typical large company because we try to limit
bureaucracy and politicking and we value / recognize good ideas and actual
execution"

~~~
munchbunny
Yeah... I'd agree more if that were actually true. In my experience it
actually says "we like to think that we limit bureaucracy and politicking."
Whether they actually do, you won't be able to tell.

This aspect of language is all signalling but very little actual signal. It's
unfortunate.

------
simonebrunozzi
> First, they chose to find a new home for Tumblr instead of shutting it down.
> Second, they considered not just how much cash they would get on day one,
> but also — and especially — what would happen to the team afterward, and how
> the product and the team would be invested in going forward. Third, they
> thought about the sort of steward of the community the new owner would be.
> They didn’t have to do any of that, and I commend them for making all three
> points a priority.

As nice as it sounds, the realist in me finds a hard time to believe that this
is exactly what has happened on Verizon's side.

I have never seen a publicly traded company do these things. Heck, you can be
sued by shareholders if you actually do these things.

My interpretation (feel free to correct me, I am just a normal guy on the
internet) is that Tumblr was difficult to value, hence PE firms didn't have a
clear idea of how much to offer, and Automattic came in with a quick decent
offer, and the final price (which I think was not disclosed) was so small for
Verizon that they decided to go the easy route, perhaps leaving a few $$ on
the table.

------
elliekelly
My only real interaction with WordPress was when I purchased, and then
promptly cancelled, a premium subscription. But the process was so
unexpectedly easy and the employee was so unexpectedly nice and helpful. She
really bent over backwards to help me even though I was leaving.

It might be silly, but that one interaction coupled with Matt's consistently
well spoken/written/thought out public comments lead me to believe he & his
company are pretty trustworthy. (The fun little smiley faces & haikus they
hide all over the site don't hurt either.)

I hope they got a great deal on Tumblr. It's a really special site and I don't
think there are many companies that would have the resources _and_ the
motivation to build it back up again. It seems Automattic has both.

~~~
chiefalchemist
Words? Yes. Actions? That's another story. He's spoken about the open web and
such things and then willfully jumps into bed with Google and Facebook, etc.

His "Learn JavaScript deeply" might as well been "Hold onto your ass kids, the
rich are about to get richer." That is, WP is no longer a tool of the common
people but it's going to be elitist (because that makes my investors happy).

Don't get me wrong. No one is perfect. I simply want to make sure people get
to see more of the picture, because there is more to see.

~~~
chiefalchemist
Down-voted for what? Honesty? Truth? Or wasting time stating the obvious? God
bless you HN.

~~~
tdb7893
I downvoted because it sounded like an unproductive rant.

------
high_derivative
"Instead, Tumblr has a new chance to redefine itself in 2019 and beyond"

So, Matt commented in the other thread that NSFW content is not coming back
due to the difficulties around hosting and processing adult content (payment
processing, advertising, everything).

Where does Tumblr fit in 2020 between Twitter, Medium, and Instagram? What's
its medium?

~~~
SolaceQuantum
For me tumblr does best in that you have chains of responses (reblogs) in
images/gifs and text form, that then are reposted on one's own blog for their
own followers to experience broadly in a singular dashboard whose ordering
isn't really manipulated (like twitter and instagram are, to my extreme
vexation).

Also, because tumblr makes it easy to create side-blogs, you can follow a
favorite person for their specific stuff. For example, if my artist friend has
an "inspiration" blog I can follow that blog instead of their "personal/vent"
blog. Similarly if I'm looking for some kind of tea-specific blog I can follow
a stranger's side blog without needing to also be exposed to the stranger
ranting about a political opinion I am uncomfortable with.

Furthermore, it's one of the large social media sites for which there is a
significant and semi-permanent resource and groupings for a variety of
LGBTQ/diversity/political/fandom interests in a way that is more flexible than
a subreddit or an interest forum. You can follow the individual blogs that
you're interested in instead of needing to follow a whole community. So if you
don't want to be exposed to some aspect of a community it's relatively trivial
to just not follow the people involved.

Twitter has a lot of this, but the lack of easy threading posts and out-of-
order feed really ruin it for me. Several of my favorite artists left tumblr
for twitter and I've had very little success following them from there.

~~~
tangue
Twitter is the key. Twitter has failed to deliver a sane way to read threads.
after all these years I still don't know how to read a conversation. And the
whole platform is about conversation ! If Tumblr can get it it right with WP,
I won't miss Twitter.

~~~
notatoad
i'm not a huge fan of the way twitter presents threads and conversations, but
the few times i've tried to follow a conversation on tumblr i've only found it
to be even worse than twitter. i'm not sure tumblr is the saviour we're
looking for here.

~~~
tangue
You're right, but that these millions dollars startups aren't able to do
better than phpBB from an UX point of view is dazzling.

------
chiefalchemist
"Instead, Tumblr has a new chance to redefine itself in 2019 and beyond"

I feel like the same thing was said about Napster at some point as well. It's
going to take __a lot__ of resources for Tumblr to overcome its status as yet
another formerly-hot-but-now-a-has-been (e.g., Yahoo, AOL, MySpace, etc.)

Trumblr had its moment. It had its time. It had its audience. They are all in
the past. The odds of it making any sort of comeback - in a Van's sneakers
sorta way - are slim (read: close to zero). The cool kids of today just aren't
as interested in a brand like Tumblr.

Tumblr will wallow around for bit and then Automattic will merge it into
WP.com, or at least the WP platform with a (name) rebranding of some sort. I
suppose that falls under MM's "redefine" but somehow I don't think so.

~~~
joshspankit
There is still no platform which gives space to those who called (the old)
Tumblr home.

~~~
Spivak
As a current/former Tumblr user this is all too real. Like The Tumblr userbase
has been scattered across IG, Twitter, Mastodon, Patreon, Reddit but the
sentiment is still that we're still homeless right now.

Nowhere on the internet had/has a community like Tumblr: aggressively queer,
feminist, full of stupid memes, amazing independent art, obsessive nerdy fans,
and this general mood of sillyness and innocence and joy and positivity.

And the porn really was weirdly a reflection of that and part of more people's
Tumblr experiences than people are seemingly willing to admit: it catered to
niche interests, slanted heavily to by-and-for women, super LGBT friendly,
funny and over the top, generally tasteful and artsy, and respectful.

------
thedz
Interesting to also compare and contrast to his post on the initial
acquisition by Yahoo:

[https://ma.tt/2013/05/yahooblr/](https://ma.tt/2013/05/yahooblr/)

------
TelmoMenezes
It's a shame they won't revert the idiotic decision to ban adult content. The
sense of freedom of expression and unrestrained creativity gave Tumblr its
edge. Without it, it's just another boring blog engine, and this is just a
matter of postponing its demise.

~~~
excalibur
Matt said they're not going to, but I wouldn't count on that being the final
word on the subject. He's supportive of adult content in principle, his
reasons for maintaining the ban are business reasons. If the community
persists in demanding that it be lifted, I wouldn't be surprised to see a
business solution present itself in the future.

------
jppope
This is actually a beautiful commentary... kudos to Matt for writing this.

------
vinhboy
The internet comment section: But what about my pron!!!

I didn't see a single positive comment like this post yesterday. It's
refreshing to read a different perspective.

------
giannidunk
I recently switched from Medium to a static site, but for anyone else looking
to switch from medium - this may now be an option again?

~~~
dewey
I think the real alternative to Medium is Ghost as a hosted or self-hosted
version. Depending on your needs and the amount of time you want to spend on
it.

[https://ghost.org/](https://ghost.org/)

~~~
jseliger
Ghost starts at $29/month, it seems, and Medium starts at $0/month, so I don't
see them as comparable.

~~~
dewey
With Medium you don't really have your own site / brand though. You can't use
your own domain [1], your users get a paywall pop up when they read your
content and the discovery feature that convinced a lot of people at the
beginning because they got so much traffic is also not so useful any more.

[1] [https://help.medium.com/hc/en-
us/articles/115003053487-Custo...](https://help.medium.com/hc/en-
us/articles/115003053487-Custom-Domains-service-deprecation)

------
onefuncman
Tumblr has the nicest Feed API out of all the social networks, compared to
Twitter Firehose, Facebook Public Feed, and Instagram (we built our own ghetto
feed for Instagram by scraping with tons of api tokens).

It would be pretty amazing to have a streaming API of the wp.com universe.

~~~
photomatt
We have one!
[https://developer.wordpress.com/docs/firehose/](https://developer.wordpress.com/docs/firehose/)

------
rchaud
It's been a few years since I had logged into my account. Does Tumblr offer a
chronologically ordered feed? I'd consider giving it another go if it works in
a way that eschews what's annoying about FB and IG.

~~~
baumandm
It has a "Best Stuff First" option but you can disable it (and it stays
disabled)

------
jasonhansel
If, as the post suggests, Tumblr becomes OSS (and especially if it becomes
distributed/decentralized), I will gladly start using it. It would--
immediately--become the best available free-as-in-speech social network.

------
luckylion
I suppose that means Gutenberg is coming to tumblr?

------
throwanem
Yahoo bought Tumblr for over a billion. Verizon sold Tumblr for under $20
million. Guess all that NSFW content they banned was worth more than they
thought it was...

~~~
ses1984
And/or maybe it was never worth over a billion in the first place.

~~~
scrollaway
<$3 mill is the latest number. I agree it was never worth a billion dollars,
but tumblr definitely lost a huge amount of value during its stay at Yahoo.
You don't _just_ overvalue an asset by 99.8%.

Do you? I have to believe you don't.

~~~
josephwegner
Don't most VCs overvalue most startups by ~100%? This doesn't seem that crazy
to me.

~~~
luckylion
It wouldn't be 99.8%, it had a 99.8% loss, so it was almost a hundred _times_
overvalued, if nothing else caused the drop (which isn't plausible, but
still).

------
reilly3000
Does this put Automattic into the ad business? Or were they already there?

~~~
gibrown
We (Automattic) already run our own ads business:
[https://wordads.co/](https://wordads.co/)

~~~
reilly3000
Cool good to know. Likes like a nice bidder stack. Will that be what runs on
Tumblr? That is pretty good inventory IMHO if ad units are available.

