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The once-great social media and blogging platform Tumblr has gone through some big changes in recent years, and another one is about to happen. Parent company Automattic says it’s migrating all of Tumblr’s blogs — more than half a billion in number — to the WordPress backend.
In a blog post announcing the initiative this week, Automattic stressed that it is not changing Tumblr’s front-end user experience. “We love Tumblr’s streamlined posting experience and current product direction. We’re not changing that,” a representative wrote.
In terms of user experience, the two blogging platforms have very different emphases. WordPress is meant to be powerful, customizable, and extensible to meet different needs, while Tumblr aims to streamline the experience to be a sort of middle ground between running a WordPress blog and using something like X or Threads.
The plan is to move to the WordPress back end so that Automattic can develop features that will be deployed to both Tumblr and WordPress blogs simultaneously. This will allow Tumblr to leverage the robust existing infrastructure of WordPress.com, and make it easier to tap into the open source work being done on WordPress to improve Tumblr.
Automattic's statement did not provide a timetable, other than acknowledging that this will be “one of the largest technical migrations in the history of the Internet.”
Automattic acquired Tumblr in a humiliating sell-off for just $3 million, a stark contrast from the $1 billion the platform was worth to Yahoo not so long ago. Yahoo acquired Tumblr in an attempt to turn it into a Facebook competitor, but it has consistently failed to make the right moves to make that happen, if it was even possible.
Since the acquisition, Automattic has shifted staff and resources, with many moving from Tumblr to other projects. However, the company says it plans to continue supporting Tumblr with new features in the future, and this migration is part of those plans.
