4 ms·

Automattic, the developers of Wordpress, currently own Tumblr.

by remexre 2y ago

righthand 2y ago
They should know how bad of an idea it is then. There is going to be so much broken from this migration.
- spondylosaurus 2y ago
  The CEO of Automattic seems like he's been on an egomaniac kick lately, which makes me suspect that the (boneheaded) directive came from him and therefore no one with any sense has been able to shoot it down.
  - throwgfdtr2024 2y ago
    He's one of the least egomaniac CEOs in the entire industry. What do you imagine this move involves, infrastructurewise? Why is it boneheaded?
    - spondylosaurus 2y ago
      [flagged]
  - nox101 2y ago
    or they decided that the one time investment on conversion would pay off in the long run of only having to maintain one system going forward
    - spondylosaurus 2y ago
      Tumblr blogs are totally unlike WordPress blogs, though. Tumblr as a platform is a totally self-contained social media platform, with the addition of public-facing "blog"-style profiles. There's no way it'll be a straightforward conversion.
- stephenr 2y ago
  These people created Wordpress and continue to base their business around it. Realising something is a bad idea technically isn't really in their bag of tricks.
  - righthand 2y ago
    Agreed they didn’t even try to keep their promise and be better custodians of Tumblr than Yahoo was. Now it’s all about content acquisition as they drain the database.
- throwgfdtr2024 2y ago
  Why? Wordpress.com, the hosted platform, has about 70-80 million new posts per month, in a massive, social-media-giant-type database, supporting a tightly locked-down, customised WP infrastructure (which even has a different admin UI AFAIK). They aren't going to migrate tumblr to 600 million separate WP instances, are they? They are just going to migrate the posts backend into that infrastructure. There are some challenges, sure, but it's churlish to suggest that Automattic don't know the intrinsic value of Tumblr and will just let it break. They rescued Tumblr from certain doom, and did so for love; they know what they are doing. Lots of people here don't seem to understand what wordpress.com is, and the scale at which it operates.
  - righthand 2y ago
    It is unclear from the article what exactly they are doing but the dialogue makes me think they are piping tumblr sites into some sort of Wordpress database. Which means Tumblr will use some sort of similar schema. Though it could be a move to kill off Tumblr entirely, seeing as they are reducing headcount at Tumblr. Especially according to this last bit: > Given the blogging site’s continued financial woes, Mullenweg shifted the majority of Tumblr’s workforce to other areas at Automattic late last year and laid off others. At the time, he suggested that moving Tumblr to WordPress would be “tricky” but added that new technology like AI would make it easier. It certainly seems possible it is more than a stack shift. It is definitely going to be a change for end users no matter how much AI he applies.

Automattic, the developers of Wordpress, currently own Tumblr.

righthand 2y ago

They should know how bad of an idea it is then. There is going to be so much broken from this migration.

spondylosaurus 2y ago
The CEO of Automattic seems like he's been on an egomaniac kick lately, which makes me suspect that the (boneheaded) directive came from him and therefore no one with any sense has been able to shoot it down.
- throwgfdtr2024 2y ago
  He's one of the least egomaniac CEOs in the entire industry. What do you imagine this move involves, infrastructurewise? Why is it boneheaded?
  - spondylosaurus 2y ago
    [flagged]
- nox101 2y ago
  or they decided that the one time investment on conversion would pay off in the long run of only having to maintain one system going forward
  - spondylosaurus 2y ago
    Tumblr blogs are totally unlike WordPress blogs, though. Tumblr as a platform is a totally self-contained social media platform, with the addition of public-facing "blog"-style profiles. There's no way it'll be a straightforward conversion.
stephenr 2y ago
These people created Wordpress and continue to base their business around it. Realising something is a bad idea technically isn't really in their bag of tricks.
- righthand 2y ago
  Agreed they didn’t even try to keep their promise and be better custodians of Tumblr than Yahoo was. Now it’s all about content acquisition as they drain the database.
throwgfdtr2024 2y ago
Why? Wordpress.com, the hosted platform, has about 70-80 million new posts per month, in a massive, social-media-giant-type database, supporting a tightly locked-down, customised WP infrastructure (which even has a different admin UI AFAIK). They aren't going to migrate tumblr to 600 million separate WP instances, are they? They are just going to migrate the posts backend into that infrastructure. There are some challenges, sure, but it's churlish to suggest that Automattic don't know the intrinsic value of Tumblr and will just let it break. They rescued Tumblr from certain doom, and did so for love; they know what they are doing. Lots of people here don't seem to understand what wordpress.com is, and the scale at which it operates.
- righthand 2y ago
  It is unclear from the article what exactly they are doing but the dialogue makes me think they are piping tumblr sites into some sort of Wordpress database. Which means Tumblr will use some sort of similar schema. Though it could be a move to kill off Tumblr entirely, seeing as they are reducing headcount at Tumblr. Especially according to this last bit: > Given the blogging site’s continued financial woes, Mullenweg shifted the majority of Tumblr’s workforce to other areas at Automattic late last year and laid off others. At the time, he suggested that moving Tumblr to WordPress would be “tricky” but added that new technology like AI would make it easier. It certainly seems possible it is more than a stack shift. It is definitely going to be a change for end users no matter how much AI he applies.