4 ms·

The short answer is: a ton of money. Tumblr has insanely high operating costs and practically no revenue stream. Yahoo has spent a lot of time and money (while

by skuhn 10y ago

The short answer is: a ton of money. Tumblr has insanely high operating costs and practically no revenue stream. Yahoo has spent a lot of time and money (while fighting with Tumblr people) to get these costs down, but much of that work would be undone to separate Tumblr from Yahoo. So much of Tumblr's traffic is comprised "non-monetizable" porn sites that Yahoo foots the CDN bill for, which does nothing to build the brand or the social aspect of the service. They can't truly crack down on it though, because that would reveal the truth: there isn't that much real use to justify the spending.

vertex-four 10y ago
Well, they can't crack down on it because a significant amount of Tumblr's actual users are there for porn (both fanart and "regular" porn), at least in part, and would see doing so as censorship and being disconnected from the community.
sytelus 10y ago
Why Tumblr has such high costs? It doesn't seem to warrant complicated infrastructure like search or Flickr. It shouldn't require 100s of people to maintain. A tons of eyeballs should translate to very significant revenues here.
dismantlethesun 10y ago
> So much of Tumblr's traffic is comprised "non-monetizable" porn sites that Yahoo foots the CDN bill for I'm curious why you find pornography to be non-monetizable. It's a $97 billion dollar industry, and is probably easier to directly monetize than a random mishmash of personal blogs because adult sites tend to focus solely on a single fetish, and there's a clear standardized categorization of such.
- skuhn 10y ago
  Tumblr does not display ads on pornographic content. It is not something that Yahoo is willing or able to monetize, and yet it represents a substantial amount (perhaps the majority) of the cost of operating Tumblr. Maybe a future operator of Tumblr would feel differently -- but I think it would be difficult to monetize both sets of content simultaneously.
  - dismantlethesun 10y ago
    They're not willing, but they are able. > I think it would be difficult to monetize both sets of content simultaneously. I'm not really certain why you'd feel that way. Most ad agencies simultaneously have an adult wing and a mainstream wing because the truth is... most people in the world are adults, and sexuality is a large part of what we consider the human condition. It's only natural that you'd pay for services and products to aid in that. What's not done is mixing the content verticals. You have pornographic content, then you advertise Adam & Eve products, paysites, or one of the many clothing distributors that will never be seen in a local mall. Ironically, since tumblr lets' you use your own templates---some people are successfully doing upsells via Tumblr using "in house" advertisements for companies.

by skuhn 10y ago

vertex-four 10y ago

Well, they can't crack down on it because a significant amount of Tumblr's actual users are there for porn (both fanart and "regular" porn), at least in part, and would see doing so as censorship and being disconnected from the community.

sytelus 10y ago

Why Tumblr has such high costs? It doesn't seem to warrant complicated infrastructure like search or Flickr. It shouldn't require 100s of people to maintain. A tons of eyeballs should translate to very significant revenues here.

dismantlethesun 10y ago

> So much of Tumblr's traffic is comprised "non-monetizable" porn sites that Yahoo foots the CDN bill for I'm curious why you find pornography to be non-monetizable. It's a $97 billion dollar industry, and is probably easier to directly monetize than a random mishmash of personal blogs because adult sites tend to focus solely on a single fetish, and there's a clear standardized categorization of such.

skuhn 10y ago
Tumblr does not display ads on pornographic content. It is not something that Yahoo is willing or able to monetize, and yet it represents a substantial amount (perhaps the majority) of the cost of operating Tumblr. Maybe a future operator of Tumblr would feel differently -- but I think it would be difficult to monetize both sets of content simultaneously.
- dismantlethesun 10y ago
  They're not willing, but they are able. > I think it would be difficult to monetize both sets of content simultaneously. I'm not really certain why you'd feel that way. Most ad agencies simultaneously have an adult wing and a mainstream wing because the truth is... most people in the world are adults, and sexuality is a large part of what we consider the human condition. It's only natural that you'd pay for services and products to aid in that. What's not done is mixing the content verticals. You have pornographic content, then you advertise Adam & Eve products, paysites, or one of the many clothing distributors that will never be seen in a local mall. Ironically, since tumblr lets' you use your own templates---some people are successfully doing upsells via Tumblr using "in house" advertisements for companies.