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.
At least OF came to their senses and that’s why they’re still thriving.
I almost wonder it was a guerilla marketing success story in terms of that whole debacle. Like i don’t think they were hit with anything but derision and snark.
My guess (and I think I read other people guessing this) was that the banks were pushing them to ban porn, and by announcing it the way they did, they were able to get cancellations data proving that they would die, so if the banks wanted any money from them at all in the future they had to back off, and did.
If it was marketing, then it probably backfired enormously - OF barely had competition that I heard of before then, but certainly did immediately after the announcement.
I thought the creators all learned to code.
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About as low-stakes as it gets lol