Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you? So? Back in early two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: a twenty year old guy named David Karp launched a
Speaker 1: new microblogging social platform and called it Tumbler Tumblr. Carp
Speaker 1: had dropped out of high school years earlier. He had
Speaker 1: switched to homeschooling, and then right after his studies, he
Speaker 1: ended up moving to Japan. He worked for a website
Speaker 1: called urban Baby. For a while, he started a consulting company.
Speaker 1: He went from high school dropout to web professional to
Speaker 1: entrepreneur in just five years. So it's two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1: Facebook had debuted three years earlier and had emerged from
Speaker 1: the college scene. Twitter was founded the year before Tumblr was,
Speaker 1: but it wouldn't really get thrust into the spotlight until
Speaker 1: a month after Tumblr launched, because that was when Twitter
Speaker 1: had the big showing at south By Southwest in March
Speaker 1: of two thousand and seven. That's when the text spear
Speaker 1: in general actually took notice of Twitter. So Carp was
Speaker 1: fond of these things called tumble logs, and these are
Speaker 1: micro blogs. They are short form log entries online. They
Speaker 1: took their name from the tagline of a blog called Narcaia,
Speaker 1: and Narkaia had the tagline experimental impressionistic sub paragraph tumblin.
Speaker 1: So carp tumbled across a tumble log called Projectionist. Now,
Speaker 1: this tumble log was, among other things, tracking other tumblelogs
Speaker 1: across the web, so it was kind of serving as
Speaker 1: a directory of tumblelogs, and Projectionist had a very nice esthetic,
Speaker 1: which wasn't always the case with a lot of tumblelogs
Speaker 1: out there. The folks behind Projectionist had created like colorful
Speaker 1: bubbles that could house a blurb, so instead of just
Speaker 1: being text on a screen, it could really be set
Speaker 1: apart and pop. They had also created things like frames
Speaker 1: that would go around a video player so it would
Speaker 1: set again set it apart from the rest of the page,
Speaker 1: and make it look really attractive. It was much more
Speaker 1: pleasant to look at than a lot of other not
Speaker 1: just tumblelogs, but blogs in general, because at this point
Speaker 1: the tools to make blogs were a little complicated for
Speaker 1: the average user. Like you could learn how to use
Speaker 1: the different tools and make a really attractive blog, but
Speaker 1: they weren't always user friendly, and Cart thought it would
Speaker 1: be really cool if someone were to develop a tumble
Speaker 1: log platform that gave users access to those kinds of
Speaker 1: tools and made it really easy. So if the platform
Speaker 1: would let users choose like a theme or a skin
Speaker 1: that would automatically apply and a general esthetic to the
Speaker 1: content that was posted to the tumblelog, that could be
Speaker 1: really cool. So you can have like different types of
Speaker 1: themes or skins, and that would determine how content would
Speaker 1: appear when you posted it to the tumblelog. Then the
Speaker 1: user would just focus on sharing the stuff they thought
Speaker 1: was interesting or funny or thought provoking or whatever, but
Speaker 1: they wouldn't have to worry about making it look good
Speaker 1: because the platform would do that for you. And the
Speaker 1: whole point was just to post very quick things like
Speaker 1: not necessarily long thoughts, although you could do that. You
Speaker 1: could post a live journal like long entry if you
Speaker 1: wanted to, but really it was about, Oh, I saw
Speaker 1: this interesting thing. I'm just going to post it here
Speaker 1: and share it with people who visit my tumblelog. Not
Speaker 1: At the time, Karp was running this consulting business and
Speaker 1: he had a developer who worked with him named Marco Armint,
Speaker 1: and between a couple of consulting gigs, when they didn't
Speaker 1: have anything else going on, they decided they'd take a
Speaker 1: crack at building this microblogging platform that Karp had been
Speaker 1: thinking about for more than a year at this point.
Speaker 1: It took them all of two weeks to build the
Speaker 1: first version of Tumblr, and according to Karp, in no
Speaker 1: time at all, their brand new platform had thirty thousand
Speaker 1: people signing up for it. It was clear that there
Speaker 1: was a demand for these kinds of tools and that
Speaker 1: a lot of people who enjoyed tumblelogging really lacked the
Speaker 1: know how on how to build the kind of tools themselves.
Speaker 1: So it became a really attractive place to go and
Speaker 1: it became the earliest version of Tumblr. Carp said that
Speaker 1: the real appeal of Tumblr was that you could put
Speaker 1: anything into it and you could take anything out of it.
Speaker 1: So by that at what he meant was that a
Speaker 1: user submitting their content to their Tumbler would see that
Speaker 1: the platform took care of all the formatting no matter
Speaker 1: what kind of content that was. If it was a video,
Speaker 1: if it was some text, if it was an image,
Speaker 1: Tumblr would handle the formatting, so you didn't have to
Speaker 1: worry about it, and Tumblr would make sure that it
Speaker 1: looked nice according to whatever esthetic you had picked. As
Speaker 1: for taking stuff out of Tumblr, well, Tumblr had an
Speaker 1: application programming interface or API, and it meant that you
Speaker 1: could actually have it play nice on other sites all right,
Speaker 1: Like you could have your own website that you operated,
Speaker 1: and you could use a Tumblr API plugin so that
Speaker 1: you could pull content from your Tumbler to display on
Speaker 1: your owned and operated site. And that way you didn't
Speaker 1: have to give your users another link to follow if
Speaker 1: you wanted them to be able to see your Tumblr material.
Speaker 1: So your one site that could be the focal point
Speaker 1: for all the stuff that you were active on online
Speaker 1: could include your Tumblr activity. Now, something else that contributed
Speaker 1: to the early adoption of Tumblr, particularly among students, was
Speaker 1: that Tumblr's ascent coincided with the rise of the smartphone.
Speaker 1: The popularity of the iPhone and then later on android
Speaker 1: phones meant that there was a new way to interact
Speaker 1: with the Internet in general and the Web in particular,
Speaker 1: and a new way to generate content for the Internet
Speaker 1: and the Web. You know, smartphones had cameras. Now, y'all,
Speaker 1: there are entire eras of my life that are largely
Speaker 1: unphotographed because carrying a camera around was a choice. You know,
Speaker 1: you know, you didn't. You didn't have a camera that
Speaker 1: was incorporated into some other device that you happened to
Speaker 1: carry with you wherever you went. If you were going
Speaker 1: someplace and you had a camera with you, it was
Speaker 1: because you decide you needed to have a camera with you.
Speaker 1: The rise of smartphones, however, meant that cameras started to
Speaker 1: become almost omnipresent no matter where you went, right, especially
Speaker 1: as more and more people started to buy smartphones. So
Speaker 1: it really changed the way we generate and consume content
Speaker 1: on the web. Tumblr became a place that could act
Speaker 1: as a display for all the stuff that you created
Speaker 1: or the stuff that you liked and you wanted to reblog.
Speaker 1: It could be a joke, it could be a video clip,
Speaker 1: It could be a digital photo. It could be an
Speaker 1: animated GIF or jiff if you insist on pronouncing it
Speaker 1: that way. It could be one of any other type
Speaker 1: of web friendly types of content and it would fit
Speaker 1: on Tumblr. And so Tumblr became kind of a web
Speaker 1: culture nexus. You know, there were entire memes that would
Speaker 1: gather support and adoption on Tumblr and then spread throughout
Speaker 1: the rest of the web. Another important element of Tumblr
Speaker 1: was that, unlike other social platforms, users were encouraged to
Speaker 1: adopt a pseudonym for their Tumblr account, so the account
Speaker 1: could be a really accurate reflection of the personality of
Speaker 1: the user. You know, it could be an accurate reflection
Speaker 1: of what they liked and what they valued, and you
Speaker 1: could get a really good feel for what was important
Speaker 1: to the user and still not know who the user
Speaker 1: was because their account is all under a pseudonym, And
Speaker 1: that meant the user could still maintain some anonymity, which
Speaker 1: could be really important. It meant that users actually had
Speaker 1: a lot more freedom to express themselves without worrying about
Speaker 1: it perhaps impacting them in other aspects of their lives.
Speaker 1: Right Like, let's say that you're a kid and you
Speaker 1: realize that you're queer, but you also are in a
Speaker 1: really sort of conservative region where you can't really have
Speaker 1: a safe space to talk about this with anybody else,
Speaker 1: and so you feel very ostracized and alone and perhaps intimidated.
Speaker 1: Tumblr was a place where you could start to explore
Speaker 1: those aspects of your personality and to express yourself, and
Speaker 1: the pseudonym could give you some protection from consequences you
Speaker 1: might face in your day to day life. So it
Speaker 1: really was an important part of a lot of people's
Speaker 1: self discovery journey. Tumblr was a big part of that.
Speaker 1: So besides just being a place to share in web culture,
Speaker 1: Tumblr served a role in creating web culture. There were
Speaker 1: entire memes and in jokes that took shape in tumblrs.
Speaker 1: The folks on Tumblr developed their own sort of language
Speaker 1: in references and punchlines, and they would use that as
Speaker 1: shorthand in communication with one another. And then a newcomer
Speaker 1: or outsider would look at Tumblr and be totally in
Speaker 1: the dark and find it just obtuse and confusing. There
Speaker 1: was a little bit of tribalism going on, and there
Speaker 1: were of course tribes within tribes, because entire tumbler communities
Speaker 1: would begin to form around specific topics, a lot of
Speaker 1: them being pop culture topics. You had tumblers that would
Speaker 1: focus on fan theories about specific shows, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: You had whole communities that would pop up around fans
Speaker 1: of a television show who were really hoping that two
Speaker 1: of the characters on the show would end up in
Speaker 1: a romantic relationship. Right the so called shipping fandoms, and
Speaker 1: the discussions in these tumblers, or at least the blogging
Speaker 1: in these tumblers, because you weren't leaving comments, you were
Speaker 1: just blogging in it. They ran the full spectrum, from
Speaker 1: wish fulfillment fantasies to even scholarly takes on how shows
Speaker 1: were playing to or sometimes outright exploiting the fan bases
Speaker 1: by teasing a relationship with no intent on actually following
Speaker 1: through with it. There are actually some really remarkable video
Speaker 1: essays on YouTube that look into this. Arrah z has
Speaker 1: done quite a few videos that focused on Tumblr culture
Speaker 1: and how various properties exploited that culture. So yeah, really
Speaker 1: fascinating stuff. And there were other communities that coalesced around
Speaker 1: real world concerns, some of which were seen as taboo
Speaker 1: or socially unacceptable in order order to address them in
Speaker 1: other types of communities, so users would lean on Tumblr
Speaker 1: communities as I mentioned earlier, to explore their own identities.
Speaker 1: They could experiment, they could find understanding and acceptance among others.
Speaker 1: So on Tumblr you could find a really robust LGBTQ
Speaker 1: plus community, for example, and communities within that community. You
Speaker 1: could also find communities that supported people who had disabilities
Speaker 1: or chronic illnesses. You could find the sort of communities
Speaker 1: that just didn't have the same representation on other social
Speaker 1: platforms or in real world spaces, particularly for people who
Speaker 1: lived in fairly rural or remote areas, So that was
Speaker 1: actually a really valuable thing as well. You also got
Speaker 1: some extremes in that, and often those would be the
Speaker 1: ones held up to ridicule or criticism that people would say, oh,
Speaker 1: here's a tumbler that's completely dedicated to people who are
Speaker 1: fantasizing about being robots, and then that would turn into
Speaker 1: kind of a punchline. So there was a downside of
Speaker 1: this as well. But I think the value that Tumblr
Speaker 1: presented toward people who really didn't have a support system
Speaker 1: in other areas of their lives was something that was
Speaker 1: really special. Tumblr would actually see its major boost and
Speaker 1: popularity in the early twenty tens, Like it definitely had
Speaker 1: early adoption, but that was in the tens of thousands.
Speaker 1: It would be around twenty ten where you'd start to
Speaker 1: see millions of accounts on Tumblr. And we also saw
Speaker 1: a lot of interesting subcultures form around that same time.
Speaker 1: For example, do you remember Bronie's That's the term for
Speaker 1: adult fans male identifying adult fans, usually of the animated
Speaker 1: series My Little Pony. Friendship is Magic. Technically, the brony
Speaker 1: culture actually originated on a different website, the message board
Speaker 1: four chan, but the subculture also put down roots over
Speaker 1: on Tumbler and flourished there. For the record, I don't
Speaker 1: see anything wrong with adults enjoying cartoons, even cartoons that
Speaker 1: are ostensibly meant for kids. A lot of great cartoon
Speaker 1: creators actually intentionally into greate cross generational appeal in their works.
Speaker 1: It would be inaccurate for me to call myself a bronie.
Speaker 1: I don't have anything against Bronie's. I just never got
Speaker 1: into My Little Pony, but goodness knows, I'm a big
Speaker 1: fan of other cartoons that are meant for kids, like
Speaker 1: Phineas and ferb and Hey Season five is coming soon anyway.
Speaker 1: Tumblr's role in Internet culture grew and its user base
Speaker 1: also grew, and while the company's valuation continued to increase,
Speaker 1: nearing an estimated one billion dollars by twenty ten, Kart
Speaker 1: was determined to prevent the sorts of monetization efforts that
Speaker 1: he was seeing elsewhere on the web, so he kept
Speaker 1: Tumblr free from advertising effectively at least until twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: and even then he was very methodical in how ads
Speaker 1: could run on the site and the sort of brand
Speaker 1: deals that Tumblr would do, and he eschewed the migration
Speaker 1: toward influencer culture, which was starting to take off at
Speaker 1: that point. That's why Tumblr allowed for pseudonyms, and it
Speaker 1: didn't do things like track the number of folks who
Speaker 1: were following a specific tumbler. In fact, it didn't even
Speaker 1: allow for comments on posts. You could reblog a post,
Speaker 1: and you could put in your own take on your reblogging,
Speaker 1: but you couldn't just leave comments underneath a post that
Speaker 1: was there. He was all about removing the barriers between
Speaker 1: creators and the stuff they wanted to post. He wanted
Speaker 1: to take as much of that away as possible so
Speaker 1: that it could have a more pure path from creator
Speaker 1: to audience. But in twenty thirteen, things would change. I'll
Speaker 1: explain more after we take this quick break. Okay, before
Speaker 1: the break, I mentioned things would change for Tumblr in
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen. In that year, Tumblr had seventy three million
Speaker 1: accounts and a suitor came calling. A suitor by the
Speaker 1: name of Yahoo. At that time, Marissa Meyer was the
Speaker 1: CEO of Yahoo's She had been part of Google. She
Speaker 1: was actually employee number twenty at Google, and then she
Speaker 1: left to become CEO of Yahoo in twenty twelve. And
Speaker 1: this was a really big move for Yahoo, this acquisition.
Speaker 1: Yahoo had also been in kind of a decline leading
Speaker 1: up to Meyer's arrival. There had been sort of a
Speaker 1: revolving door of CEOs for a while. You know, leadership
Speaker 1: was undergoing a lot of tumultuous change. And then Meyer
Speaker 1: was coming in and attempting to create some stability in
Speaker 1: the company, and Yahoo made an offer that Tumblr could
Speaker 1: not refuse. The offer was valued at around one point
Speaker 1: one billion dollars. Meyer promised not to screw Tumblr up.
Speaker 1: Now you might wonder why Karp would agree to sell
Speaker 1: Tumblr in the first place. After all, he previously had
Speaker 1: been giving interviews to the media saying that he didn't
Speaker 1: make Tumblr in order to make money. That money was
Speaker 1: not the motivating factor for his involvement with Tumblr. He
Speaker 1: wanted to build a foundation upon which people could create stuff.
Speaker 1: That's what pushed him, he claimed. But following Yahoo's move
Speaker 1: their offer to Tumblr, Karp would say that he had
Speaker 1: a lot of conversations with Marissa Meyer, and he found
Speaker 1: that Tumblr and Yahoo were in alignment on a lot
Speaker 1: of topics, including the use of native advertising and branding
Speaker 1: on Tumblr. And while he wasn't originally looking to sell
Speaker 1: the company, the opportunity meant that Tumblr would have massive
Speaker 1: corporate support while entering into the next stage of its growth,
Speaker 1: which he said the Tumblr just couldn't do without something
Speaker 1: like a Yahoo behind it. So Karp would actually stay
Speaker 1: on with Tumblr. He would serve as the CEO for
Speaker 1: the Tumblr division within Yahoo. I think it's safe to
Speaker 1: say that Marissa Meyer and Yahoo had pounced on Tumblr
Speaker 1: without really understanding what they were getting into. For one thing,
Speaker 1: Tumblr was popular, you know, there were more than a
Speaker 1: million active users in more than seventy million accounts, and sure,
Speaker 1: venture capital companies have been making investments into Tumblr to
Speaker 1: the point where the valuation was hovering around a billion dollars.
Speaker 1: But Tumblr wasn't at all profitable. It really wasn't a
Speaker 1: revenue generator. It was running these brand campaigns and stuff,
Speaker 1: and had made some strategic partnerships with a few brands,
Speaker 1: but the money coming in didn't even come close to
Speaker 1: covering the bills. It wasn't covering the operating costs of
Speaker 1: the servers, let alone the salaries of the people who
Speaker 1: worked there, and so turning Tumblr into a profitable business
Speaker 1: was going to be a real challenge. See Tumblr was
Speaker 1: also extremely permissive when it came to the types of
Speaker 1: content that users could share. A lot of that content
Speaker 1: was of a more mature nature. There were entire communities
Speaker 1: focused on sexuality, and it wouldn't take a whole lot
Speaker 1: of searching to actually find pornographic material shared on the platform.
Speaker 1: So let's say that you run a company. It's a
Speaker 1: brand company, and you want to advertise to folks, and
Speaker 1: social platforms can be a really valuable place where you
Speaker 1: can set your advertising. But then let's say you're worried
Speaker 1: that your ad might appear next to a pornographic video
Speaker 1: or pornographic gif or photo. Plus, the people to whom
Speaker 1: you're advertising are all operating under pseudonyms, so you don't
Speaker 1: actually know who those people are. One of the more
Speaker 1: valuable aspects of most social networks is that the advertiser
Speaker 1: can learn an awful lot about the customers that they're
Speaker 1: advertising to. Targeted advertising is really big business, but it's
Speaker 1: harder to target users when they are quasi anonymous not impossible.
Speaker 1: In fact, you could argue that a person's name is
Speaker 1: one of the least important parts of who they are,
Speaker 1: but it still was an issue. Now, this meant that
Speaker 1: when Yahoo tried to monetize Tumbler, they ran into some
Speaker 1: resistance among companies that were advertisers. The sexual nature of
Speaker 1: much of the content was on Tumblr was kind of
Speaker 1: a non starter for a lot of companies. Advertisers were
Speaker 1: more interested in other platforms that had a combination of
Speaker 1: content moderation and users having to create accounts under their
Speaker 1: actual names and share more information about themselves, more direct information,
Speaker 1: not just not just indicating who they were through blogging,
Speaker 1: but outright telling the platform who they were, where they
Speaker 1: were from, how old they were, etc. So the semi
Speaker 1: anonymous nature of Tumblr, coupled with the proliferation of sexual
Speaker 1: content meant that it was not an attractive place for advertisers.
Speaker 1: Then we get to the debacle known as dash Con.
Speaker 1: Originally it was called as tumble Con USA, so this
Speaker 1: was an in person convention and it had no official
Speaker 1: connection to Tumblr. It was catering to Tumblr communities, but
Speaker 1: in itself was not part of Tumblr. Organizers were all
Speaker 1: part of various tumbler communities, and they had this ambitious
Speaker 1: idea to create a live event where Tumblr community members
Speaker 1: would gather in person and celebrate the stuff that they loved.
Speaker 1: There would also be live performances, there'd be bands, there'd
Speaker 1: be a live podcast from Welcome to night Vale, a
Speaker 1: fantastic podcast. If you've never listened to it, you should
Speaker 1: check it out. I really enjoy that one. There would
Speaker 1: be panel discussions, there'd be meet and greets, and there
Speaker 1: would be the ballpit. So the story of dash Con
Speaker 1: is a complicated one. It involved a lot of bad decisions,
Speaker 1: mostly guided through a lack of experience and knowledge, as
Speaker 1: well as a lack of capability, which again not a
Speaker 1: slight on the people who wanted to throw this event.
Speaker 1: I think originally the organizers really did want to throw
Speaker 1: a great event. One of them, at least, I think,
Speaker 1: was sincere in that desire. The entire time, they weren't
Speaker 1: up to the task, and that's again not a slide
Speaker 1: on them. They were tackling something they had never done before.
Speaker 1: And it turns out that throwing live events is hard, right.
Speaker 1: You usually have entire departments of people who are dedicated
Speaker 1: to specific tasks within throwing a live event to get
Speaker 1: it to get off the ground, and even then you're
Speaker 1: going to run into issues, particularly the first couple of
Speaker 1: years you try and have an event, so it's always difficult,
Speaker 1: and it was, you know, a long shot at best
Speaker 1: for this thing to go off. Well, the whole event
Speaker 1: became legendary for how poorly it was launched and run.
Speaker 1: How some of the organizers ended up begging attendees to
Speaker 1: contribute cash right there at the event in an emergency
Speaker 1: effort to keep the event going after it had already started.
Speaker 1: You know, it's kind of like saying, oh, no, we
Speaker 1: need to lay down more railroad tracks because the train's
Speaker 1: running out of track to run on. Numerous folks who
Speaker 1: were meant to appear at the convention canceled because they
Speaker 1: sensed that the event organizers were in over their heads
Speaker 1: and would be unable to meet their obligations. The whole
Speaker 1: thing became a big joke, and the punchline was almost
Speaker 1: always that darn ballpit, which, if you've not seen pictures,
Speaker 1: was a pretty pathetic little feature. Anyway, dash Con wasn't
Speaker 1: officially affiliated with Tumblr, so it wasn't Tumblr's fault that
Speaker 1: dash Con was such a total disaster, but Tumblr's reputation
Speaker 1: still took a bit of a hit just through association.
Speaker 1: By the way, I already mentioned Sarah Z, who has
Speaker 1: done numerous video essays on Tumblr culture. She has also
Speaker 1: done an incredible video essay, like an exhaustive video essay
Speaker 1: about the disaster that was Dashcan. So if you're really
Speaker 1: curious about all the dirt and all the tea being spilt,
Speaker 1: I recommend going to YouTube and checking out Sarah Zed's
Speaker 1: It's like Sarah z Sarah Z's video essay on Dashcan.
Speaker 1: Back to Tumblr though, so, the user base of Tumbler
Speaker 1: was slowly growing older because that's how time works, and
Speaker 1: as they were aging, they were also kind of aging
Speaker 1: out of Tumblr for various reasons, and so some of
Speaker 1: them were migrating over to other platforms that were introducing
Speaker 1: features that they found to be, you know, something that
Speaker 1: they wanted to do, something that wanted to use moving on.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean that everyone left Tumblr, but a lot
Speaker 1: of people did so folks began to move to other
Speaker 1: networks like Facebook or Twitter for different reasons. Tumblr saw
Speaker 1: a decline in user activity and Yahoo was forced to
Speaker 1: acknowledge that they had massively overpaid for Tumblr. In early
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, Yahoo wrote down the value of Tumblr by
Speaker 1: more than two hundred million dollars. The company as a
Speaker 1: whole had posted a four point four billion dollar loss
Speaker 1: in Q four of twenty fifteen. If that wasn't just Tumblr,
Speaker 1: that was all of Yahoo, but Tumblr was part of
Speaker 1: the problem. One could make a decent argument that Yahoo's
Speaker 1: acquisition of Tumblr was one of the big booboos and
Speaker 1: mergers and acquisitions in the tech space. And in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: Yahoo found itself the subject of an acquisition. So as
Speaker 1: a reminder, Yahoo acquired Tumblr in twenty thirteen, and then
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen, Yahoo itself became acquired by Verizon. Because
Speaker 1: there's always a bigger fish, so Verizon acquired Yahoo and
Speaker 1: its subsidiaries, which included Tumblr, and they bought it all
Speaker 1: for the princely sum of four point five billion dollars.
Speaker 1: That was the kitten, kaboodle everything of Yahoos. Verizon would
Speaker 1: love Yahoo in with another acquisition and had made a
Speaker 1: couple of years earlier, which was Aol, and together AOL
Speaker 1: and Yahoo became oath within Verizon, which would later get
Speaker 1: a rebranding. A few months later, carp announced he was
Speaker 1: leaving the company. So he had spent a little more
Speaker 1: than a decade as Tumblr's founder and leader, and now
Speaker 1: he was walking away. He didn't really give a full
Speaker 1: explanation as to why he was leaving, other than he
Speaker 1: wanted to pursue other ambitions. But I mean, Tumblr had
Speaker 1: already had sort of a fall from grace at this point.
Speaker 1: So in twenty eighteen, Verizon made a major change to
Speaker 1: Tumblr's policies by cracking down on adult content. This move
Speaker 1: had a huge impact on user activity on Tumblr. Some
Speaker 1: analysts estimated that there was as much as a thirty
Speaker 1: percent drop in user traffic on Tumblr in the wake
Speaker 1: of this decision. Now users objected to censorship and restrictions,
Speaker 1: and part of the problem was that the filters that
Speaker 1: Verizon had put in place to detect and prevent adult
Speaker 1: content from posting to Tumblr were very aggressive, and users
Speaker 1: argued that often they were flagging some content as inappropriate
Speaker 1: when the content should not have been deemed inappropriate. This
Speaker 1: move had a disproportionate effect on certain subcommunities, particularly the
Speaker 1: LGBTQ plus communities on Tumblr, and again, Tumblr had served
Speaker 1: as kind of a safe space for people to sort
Speaker 1: of explore their sexuality and to kind of learn who
Speaker 1: they really were. But now they were finding that some
Speaker 1: of this expression was no longer being tolerated on the platform.
Speaker 1: They found themselves unable to express themselves or to engage
Speaker 1: in the type of experimentation that had previously been facilitated
Speaker 1: by Tumblr. However, while you could easily say well, that's
Speaker 1: not good. I mean, you know, this was a healthy place,
Speaker 1: or at least it could be a healthy place for
Speaker 1: someone to do this sort of exploration and to learn
Speaker 1: more about themselves, there was no denying that there was
Speaker 1: also some truly horrible stuff on Tumblr. Stuff that was
Speaker 1: not just in bad taste. Often it was illegal. You know.
Speaker 1: There were cases in which people found instances of child
Speaker 1: abuse on Tumblr, like videos and photos and that sort
Speaker 1: of thing, And there's no way of getting around that.
Speaker 1: That is truly terrible stuff and needed to be removed.
Speaker 1: So from a business standpoint, the move to restrict adult
Speaker 1: content was totally understandable, right Verizon needed to prove to
Speaker 1: advertisers that Tumblr was a safe place and that posting
Speaker 1: ads there wasn't going to backfire on these companies they
Speaker 1: weren't going to post an ad, and then someone takes
Speaker 1: a screenshot of that ad appearing next to an image
Speaker 1: with child abuse in it. That would be absolutely horrible
Speaker 1: on every level. But that same decision to restrict adult
Speaker 1: content meant a ton of folks would just stop using Tumblr,
Speaker 1: So that also meant there were fewer people to advertise. Two, Like,
Speaker 1: the people who remained were still faithful to Tumblr, but
Speaker 1: there weren't as many of them. The thirty percent drop
Speaker 1: is a big drop, so this was a kind of
Speaker 1: catch twenty two. Right, you're doing something to one tell
Speaker 1: advertisers this is a safe space for you, but you're
Speaker 1: also telling them, but it means that we're losing thirty
Speaker 1: percent of the people you wanted to advertise to in
Speaker 1: the first place. To illustrate the decline, CNBC reported that
Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen, a single day on Tumblr would say
Speaker 1: users publish eighty four million posts at minimum, So on
Speaker 1: the slowest day in twenty fourteen, there would still be
Speaker 1: at least eighty four million posts pushed out to Tumblr.
Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, the number of posts was down to
Speaker 1: thirty million, so less than half of what was being
Speaker 1: posted in twenty fourteen, that was not the direction Tumblr
Speaker 1: needed to go in in order to become a profitable business. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're not done with Tumblr yet. We've still got some
Speaker 1: more to talk about, including another shift in ownership. But
Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break. So Verizon had purchased
Speaker 1: Tumblr in twenty seventeen as part of Yahoo. Right, so
Speaker 1: really they bought Yahoo and with it came Tumblr. But
Speaker 1: Verizon's ownership of Tumblr did not last very long. In
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, Verizon sold Tumblr off to another company called Automatic.
Speaker 1: This was a little ironic because Automatic is the company
Speaker 1: that operates word Press, the blogging tool WordPress, and way
Speaker 1: back when Karp was first ide eight ing on Tumblr,
Speaker 1: when he was first thinking what would Tumblr be, WordPress
Speaker 1: was often held up as sort of the contrast to
Speaker 1: what he wanted because Carp saw WordPress as complicated. He
Speaker 1: thought it wasn't very user friendly. It took a lot
Speaker 1: of work to make stuff look good on WordPress. He
Speaker 1: also noted that it was geared more toward long form
Speaker 1: content generation, so not meant for microblogging. So in a way,
Speaker 1: you could say that Karp created Tumblr to be kind
Speaker 1: of an opposite to WordPress in some ways. And now
Speaker 1: the company that operated WordPress would also own Tumblr, so
Speaker 1: a little bit ironic, I guess, in at least the
Speaker 1: Atlantis Morisset kind of way. And to twist the knife
Speaker 1: a little bit, there's also the price that Automatic allegedly
Speaker 1: paid for Tumblr. So the actual amount was never disclosed publicly,
Speaker 1: but rumor mill but the sales price for Tumblr at
Speaker 1: around three million dollars. So remember Yahoo had purchased Tumbler
Speaker 1: way back in twenty thirteen for one point one billion,
Speaker 1: and then six years later it sold for just three
Speaker 1: million dollars to Automatic. Clearly, Verizon, just like Yahoo, had
Speaker 1: trouble finding a way to operate Tumblr that was either
Speaker 1: profitable or attractive to users, or preferably both. So would
Speaker 1: Automatic succeed where Yahoo and Verizon had stumbled? Well, so far,
Speaker 1: the answer to that question has been not so much.
Speaker 1: To be fair to Automatic, the company has had to
Speaker 1: focus primarily on fixing issues like bugs for the last
Speaker 1: couple of years because under Verizon's ownership it wasn't really
Speaker 1: looked after very well. Tumblr was kind of an afterthought.
Speaker 1: So well, they've had to spend at least a couple
Speaker 1: of years trying to get things to run correctly. And
Speaker 1: then also to introduce some new features. So their goal
Speaker 1: was really to improve the core experience for users and
Speaker 1: then try to find ways to make Tumblr more of
Speaker 1: a revenue generator. Interestingly, while much of the old guard
Speaker 1: of Tumblr has since moved on to other platforms, younger
Speaker 1: users have adopted Tumblr in increasing numbers over the years.
Speaker 1: In a September twenty twenty two article, CNBC reporter Leah
Speaker 1: Collins wrote that sixty percent of Tumblr's users are Generation Z.
Speaker 1: These are the same users that companies like Meta and
Speaker 1: Twitter are trying to attract and to retain. It's possible
Speaker 1: that the things that set Tumblr apart from most other
Speaker 1: social platforms are the features that appeal to younger users
Speaker 1: in general. For example, on like Instagram or Facebook or Twitter,
Speaker 1: Tumblr organizes posts chronologically, not algorithmically, so you actually see
Speaker 1: stuff in the reverse order of when it was posted,
Speaker 1: as opposed to you see it in the order that
Speaker 1: the platform has decided you need to see it. Also, again,
Speaker 1: it gets away from that influencer culture. Everything is under pseudonyms,
Speaker 1: it's not under personalities as much, and so you're kind
Speaker 1: of away from the whole sort of I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to call it fake, but at least
Speaker 1: at times disingenuous environment of influencer culture. I will never
Speaker 1: think of myself as an influencer, which I think is
Speaker 1: on the safe side. I don't know that I'm that influential,
Speaker 1: but I certainly don't want to be the kind of
Speaker 1: person who's, you know, trying to orchestrate a perfect moment
Speaker 1: for camera and assume make everyone assume that that's what
Speaker 1: my life is all the time and try and sell
Speaker 1: stuff based off that. That's just not for me. I
Speaker 1: would be terrible at it if I even tried so,
Speaker 1: but I have no desire to try, and I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people who flocked to Tumblr are kind
Speaker 1: of tired of that whole approach to social media in
Speaker 1: the first place. But this doesn't change the fact that
Speaker 1: Tumblr isn't exactly acting like a gold mine. Earlier this month,
Speaker 1: a leaked memo from Automatic showed that the company was
Speaker 1: reorganizing and shifting some teams away from Tumblr to work
Speaker 1: at other divisions within Automatic. Matt Mullenwegg, who is this
Speaker 1: CEO of Automatic, later confirmed this news and said that quote,
Speaker 1: we have not gotten the expected results from our effort,
Speaker 1: which was to have Tumbler's revenue and usage above its
Speaker 1: previous peaks end quote. Mullen Weg said that his teams
Speaker 1: had put in more than six hundred person years of
Speaker 1: effort into Tumblr since purchasing the company, and I guess
Speaker 1: there just has to come a time where you say
Speaker 1: the return on investment just isn't there and you have
Speaker 1: to scale back or else you're going to just lose
Speaker 1: tons of money. Now, to be clear, Tumblr isn't necessarily
Speaker 1: on the chopping block. It's not like it's going to
Speaker 1: get sold off for parts necessarily. I mean, maybe it will,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't appear to be the current plan. Mullen
Speaker 1: Wegg says that the plan is for his team to
Speaker 1: really focus on improving the core functionality of Tumblr in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, and that one function that might get
Speaker 1: an overhaul or maybe will get phased out completely is
Speaker 1: a live streaming video feature that Automatic introduced into Tumblr
Speaker 1: last year called Tumblr Live. Apparently, the site has not
Speaker 1: seen widespread adoption the app or Tumblr has not seen
Speaker 1: a lot of adoption of Tumblr Live, and it just
Speaker 1: hasn't taken off the way that Automatic had hoped. Mullen
Speaker 1: Wegg indicated that the company would try their darness to
Speaker 1: get folks to use live before the end of the year,
Speaker 1: that that is part of their contractual obligation. But if
Speaker 1: that doesn't happen, then in January they're going to re
Speaker 1: assess the feature and make a decision as to whether
Speaker 1: or not it even belongs in Tumblr at all. And
Speaker 1: it sounds to me like Tumblr Live is on borrowed time.
Speaker 1: There are other features that Automatic introduced since their acquisition
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen, and they've also seen some pretty poor
Speaker 1: adoption or in some cases outright opposition from users. So
Speaker 1: mullen Wegg is indicated the next year, Tumblr is likely
Speaker 1: going to scale down a bit, shed some of these
Speaker 1: features and maybe roll back other ones, and really focus
Speaker 1: just on creating the core elements of what makes Tumblr
Speaker 1: work and to make those better. The smaller team will
Speaker 1: also reduce the cost of operating Tumblr in the first place,
Speaker 1: which is important because mullen Wegg indicated the site has
Speaker 1: yet to make more money than it costs to run.
Speaker 1: So I think each owner of Tumblr, maybe not to
Speaker 1: the extent of Verizon Verizon was buying all of Yahoo,
Speaker 1: but Yah and Automatic. I think both of these companies
Speaker 1: thought they saw in Tumblr a way to turn things
Speaker 1: around and to monetize things in a way that would
Speaker 1: make both users and advertisers happy. But no one has
Speaker 1: quite landed on the working formula yet. Doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: it is impossible or that they won't figure it out.
Speaker 1: But that's been mostly Tumblr's history since it's acquisitioned by
Speaker 1: Yahoo back in twenty thirteen. An interesting story. Tumblr's an
Speaker 1: interesting platform, one that I never really got that much into.
Speaker 1: I think I was too old by the time Tumblr
Speaker 1: had come out to really vibe with the culture of Tumblr.
Speaker 1: I'm an old fogie and younger communities, with their own
Speaker 1: languages and their own values and philosophies, are often at
Speaker 1: a disconnect with my own, Which is not saying that
Speaker 1: those communities are bad or that I'm bad, just that
Speaker 1: we don't line up because I'm old. I still don't
Speaker 1: really understand what no cap means. Someone tell me before
Speaker 1: I go sit in the rocking chair for the rest
Speaker 1: of the day. But anyway, that is the rundown on
Speaker 1: Tumblr so far. I hope that they do see a renaissance.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, younger communities find value in Tumblr, and
Speaker 1: I think there is value in it being in operation,
Speaker 1: there just has to be a way to cover the
Speaker 1: costs of that operation or else Ultimately it will go away.
Speaker 1: No one's going to run it out of just a
Speaker 1: charitable desire to give young people a place where they
Speaker 1: can find themselves. That just isn't how the world works unfortunately. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that's all for today. I hope you're all well, and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is
Speaker 1: an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
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Speaker 1: favorite shows.