At WordCamp Canada 2025, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg called Tumblr his “biggest failure,” noting the challenge of maintaining the platform’s half-billion blogs while it remains unprofitable. Though plans to migrate Tumblr to WordPress infrastructure are on hold, Mullenweg said he hasn’t given up.
They do call it a Hellsite for many reasons. Not being profitable is one of them.
At the same time, it has calmed down a bit as the user base has aged up, and the more volatile elements have left for bluer skies.
Oddly enough, other than the mess of the NSFW filter, it’s been fairly controversy free. You can still use their API without paying globs of money, for example. Twitter and Facebook have all thrown that out, and Reddit has made other bad decisions, in addition to imploding their third party app ecosystem.
I’m guessing he’s stupid or greedy.
Throw in an ad and the service pays for itself.
That is, unless he’s renting hardware like a dipshit.
A bunch of companies have been trying for years to monetize tumblr. They’ve all failed. Tumblr users are very proud of this.
They do call it a Hellsite for many reasons. Not being profitable is one of them.
At the same time, it has calmed down a bit as the user base has aged up, and the more volatile elements have left for bluer skies.
Oddly enough, other than the mess of the NSFW filter, it’s been fairly controversy free. You can still use their API without paying globs of money, for example. Twitter and Facebook have all thrown that out, and Reddit has made other bad decisions, in addition to imploding their third party app ecosystem.