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I'm super excited to have the Tumblr team and product join the Automattic family. We've been evolving Automattic to be more of a Berkshire Hathaway-inspired mod
by photomatt 7y ago
I'm super excited to have the Tumblr team and product join the Automattic family. We've been evolving Automattic to be more of a Berkshire Hathaway-inspired model and businesses with a lot of autonomy, and this continues that trend.
I was very impressed with the engagement and activity Tumblr has continued to have, and I hope that with this new ownership and investment the product will blossom.
- knd775 7y agoI'm curious why you would choose to maintain Verizon's policy changes that alienated the majority of the user-base.
- fooey 7y agoThey only paid $20 million. Buying a brand name and some domain relevant developers for that little is probably a good deal.
- rchaud 7y agowow, that's less than the $35m MySpace went for in 2011, amd it could be argued that MS was even more of a ghost town then than Tumblr is today.
- tptacek 7y agoThey paid something closer to $3MM according to Dan Primack (but also took on the employee payroll).
- echelon 7y agoWhat a steal! Talent, a brand, and eyeballs. Even if the ship can't be turned around in the end, presumably all the new hires are top notch.
- photomatt 7y agoAdult content is not our forte either, and it creates a huge number of potential issues with app stores, payment providers, trust and safety... it's a problem area best suited for companies fully dedicated to creating a great experience there. I personally have very liberal views on these things, but supporting adult content as a business is very different.
- guelo 7y agoThen why was Yahoo able to deal with it?
- grzm 7y agoThey arguably weren’t: they no longer have tumblr.
- zimpenfish 7y agoThey also neither have Flickr; a similar hotbed of porn. Surprised SmugMug haven't started a purge there, yet.
- ralfd 7y agoWas that sarcasm or is there really (public) porn on Flickr?
- solarkraft 7y agoWhy would they?
- ng12 7y agoIf you expect Tumblr to have a lot of autonomy why not let them handle what used to be their core competency?
- ethbro 7y agoI appreciate the perspective, but let's be honest. What you're essentially saying is 'Adult content is hard because the US government is willing to lean on payment providers to enforce quasi-legal, anti-free speech policies.' Have you considered adopting a federated corporate structure that would legally firewall off a "tumblr-for-porn"? Most of the goodwill bonfire seems to have been caused not by Tumblr treating adult content differently, but by not even putting up a fight to provide a space for it. Having a mirror world Tumblr that adult blogs could be kicked to would earn a lot of that back, while presumably amortizing platform development and ops over a larger userbase. Surrendering because free speech is hard is never a good look.
- BitwiseFool 7y agoWe? So I take it you work at Automattic? Any insights about the decision to buy Tumblr?
- ilikehurdles 7y agoBased on his profile, he's the founder.
- BitwiseFool 7y agoHuh, I never even thought to check the profile. I learn something new everyday.
- throwaway413 7y agoClassic HN strikes again.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- stedaniels 7y agophotomatt is Matt Mullenweg founder and CEO of Automattic.
- relaunched 7y agophotomatt co-founded automattic. https://ma.tt/ https://ma.tt/
- Kye 7y agoHe's the matt in Automattic.
- pluma 7y agoWho are the auto and ic then?
- 7y ago
- zuuow 7y agoWhat's your plan to wind down Tumblr?
- photomatt 7y agoWe are planning to do the opposite: excited to invest into the platform. The web needs open and independent publishing and social media more than ever.
- rhegart 7y agoThanks! Hope you guys can turn it around. Good blogging platforms are better for evolving ideas than Twitter.
- opencl 7y agoAre there any plans to improve the automated porn flagging system which seems to have a very annoyingly high false positive rate at the moment?
- photomatt 7y agoI can imagine that false positives are incredibly frustrating for legit creators, and something we will try to eliminate.
- Mindwipe 7y agoHa, claiming liberal viewpoints and then lets the mask slip by describing creators of adult content, sex workers etc as outside "legit creators".
- lugg 7y agoLegitimate content creators would be frustrated by being flagged as posting illegitimate content would they not? Or are you just trying to take this out of context because of a casual tone?
- 7y ago
- MDWolinski 7y agoIt would be nice if investment in Tumblr is made to create a privacy focused social network for those who have or would like to remove FB from our worlds.
- rchaud 7y agoit's probably not economically feasible to have a privacy-respecting app that's also funded by a programmatic targeted advertising network. even if it was, people have shown over and over that they prioritize convenience over privacy, and businesses simply aren't conscientious enough to try a different way.
- artpi 7y agoYou are entirely right! However, they are entirely different monetization business models that we are offering our WordPress.com users. Our Simple Payments block for example let's you sell directly on your site: https://en.support.wordpress.com/wordpress-editor/blocks/simple-payments-block/ https://en.support.wordpress.com/wordpress-editor/blocks/sim... People are extremely creative in how they use it, basically turning sites into stores or kickstarter-like campaigns with that little feature. We are looking into extending this functionality.
- webwanderings 7y agoMore advertisement real estate space. Not that Wordpress.com was already not littered enough! The heydays of "blogging" was/is all BS.
- evanelias 7y agoAccording to this article [1], you plan to move Tumblr's backend onto WordPress. Considering that Tumblr's infra stores over 1 trillion distinct product objects, this would be one of the most technically ambitious migrations in history. Can you share any thoughts of how it will be approached? Will you be pruning/purging old content or inactive users? [1] https://poststatus.com/automattic-has-purchased-tumblr/ https://poststatus.com/automattic-has-purchased-tumblr/
- joshmn 7y agoI'm curious: What approach, if any, would you take? I'm sure you have an interesting prospective based on your experience working at MySQL-friendly shops, in addition to being an engineer at Tumblr once upon a time.
- evanelias 7y agoThank you for asking, but I probably shouldn't get into that :) I'm inherently conflicted / biased due to designing a solid chunk of Tumblr's backend, and also previously worked for another Automattic competitor (Six Apart, the defunct company behind Movable Type). Edit to avoid anyone misconstruing, I'm not trying to imply one thing or another, just that I can't approach this impartially. And in any case, I wish everyone well on both sides of this acquisition. I'm just genuinely curious how they plan to proceed from a technical standpoint, as it's a really interesting challenge.
- mikeschinkel 7y agoJust curious about your just curious; what is the architecture of the current Tumblr back end? This appears to be 6 years old. Is it still relevant? http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/2/13/tumblr-architecture-15-billion-page-views-a-month-and-harder.html http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/2/13/tumblr-architectur...
- evanelias 7y agoEhhh parts of that article were never accurate, especially the stuff about having an hbase-powered dashboard feed. Primarily the product backend is monolithic PHP (custom framework) + services in various languages + sharded MySQL + Memcached + Gearman. Lots of other technologies in use though too, but I'll defer to current employees if they want to answer.
- simonebrunozzi 7y agoFor the ones that don't know you, you are the CEO and founder, Matt Mullenweg [0]. I am curious to hear more about the: "...to be more of a Berkshire Hathaway-inspired model and businesses with a lot of autonomy". Could you share some details? Thanks for building Wordpress. When I used to be a prolific blogger, it was my platform of choice. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Mullenweg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Mullenweg
- photomatt 7y agoWe've found the model of strong CEOs or GMs, combined with a great culture and shared platform, can be really magical. It doesn't need to be complicated, but it's also not easy.
- justinator 7y agoSounds cool! Are you hiring?!
- gibrown 7y agoAlways! https://automattic.com/work-with-us/ https://automattic.com/work-with-us/
- PhasmaFelis 7y agoAre you going to reverse the censorship and let the artists, trans/sex-worker activists, and sex educators that were banned return? If not, you're lying through your teeth about respecting anything Tumblr has accomplished.
- donohoe 7y agoHave you tried turning it off and on again?
- levi0214 7y agoWhy didn't Pornhub acquire Tumblr? Could you give us more information about this, since Pornhub once said they wanted to acquire Tumblr.
- Sharlin 7y agoHmm, this raises the question: why hasn't Pornhub (or anyone) started a successful X-rated Tumblr clone yet? The demand seems to be there.
- levi0214 7y agoYeah, I was thinking exactly the same question. This also raises other questions: What is the difference between Pornhub and a pornographic Tumblr? What is the essential demand behind the demand for a pornographic Tubmlr? A very interesting phenomenon is that since Tumblr announced the ban on adult content, many bloggers have turned to Twitter instead of Pornhub.
- shiningdays 7y agoI think the difference is in branding/positioning, and therefore the mental state of the person engaging with the site and creating content. Porn = male gaze-y[1], intentionally and overtly about sexual gratification, less about exploration A free-wheeling blog site = a place open to the exploration of a number of different aspects of identity, of which sexuality is one of them. In short: If Pornhub were to create a tumblr clone, they'd inherently be enticing people to _produce porn_ rather than producing content which might happen to be somewhat pornographic. There's a huge mental barrier there for lots of people, even if they happen to enjoy viewing porn or producing sexually explicit imagery. [1] Yes I know women watch porn, the default assumption of porn viewership is still a cis male audience
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Traubenfuchs 7y ago
- fouc 7y agoWill you be able to bring back the inclusiveness Tumblr used to have for LGBT, Sex workers, etc ?
- davidgerard 7y agoAs he said above, he's very liberal in his views, except when it might affect the money in any way.
- redis_mlc 7y agoThat's an uncharitable interpretation. Craigslist went through legal hell dealing with NSFW content because of puritanical US States Attorneys. See any remaining dating links on CL? Matt doesn't need that either.
- droidist2 7y ago>puritanical US States Attorneys Yes, Kamala Harris in particular.
- tus88 7y agoThanks for making a website that works nice without Javascript :)
- lesdeuxmagots 7y agoI wish you and the team the best of luck. Tumblrs first downfall was partly because the autonomy it was given to a team that had no idea how to grow the business. Karp had zero idea how to grow the product or the revenues past the initial vision. D'onofrio is an operator, likely not the best fit for leading a vision of what a new Tumblr with a new mandate should be.
- tomjen3 7y agoDoes that mean we can expect tumblr to get porn back?
- tiagok 7y agoTumblr secret souce was freedom .. 4chans freedom .. if you take that away .. it's not interesting anymore .. It will became a choped down space of expression !