Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic • Hacker News Board

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#141

Post by SkyBelow » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 9:55 PM UTC

elliekelly wrote: post #109

photomatt wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adult 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.

> it creates a huge number of potential issues with app stores, payment providers, trust and safety... I completely understand that “Adult Content” can cause a ton of headaches for a business but Tumblr’s current definition of “Adult Content” is very broad and I hope when the transaction is complete you’ll at least be open to reviewing the scope of the definition. Right now it includes many things that aren’t adult a…

>which could be seen by children on many beaches in Europe and even on the streets of Boston and New York City

Also seen by young children when they, ya know, eat.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#142

Post by evanelias » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 9:57 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #86

xwdv wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically an exercise in blowing several million dollars.

It's funny the stuff HN fixates on. If all you read is this comment thread, you might actually believe that non-porn Tumblr really is just "an exercise in blowing several million dollars", rather than a concern for a very loud, probably rather small subset of Tumblr users (or rather: former users). What seems at least as likely as "adult content is vital to the future of Tumblr" is that adult content has much more va…

This is spot-on. HN has generally massively over-estimated the amount of porn on Tumblr, in terms of percentage of total content. I say this as a primary source with first-hand factual knowledge.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#143

Post by HenryBemis » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 9:57 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #86

xwdv wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically an exercise in blowing several million dollars.

It's funny the stuff HN fixates on. If all you read is this comment thread, you might actually believe that non-porn Tumblr really is just "an exercise in blowing several million dollars", rather than a concern for a very loud, probably rather small subset of Tumblr users (or rather: former users). What seems at least as likely as "adult content is vital to the future of Tumblr" is that adult content has much more va…

Tumblr's audience(s) were: adult, fandoms, teens, artists

Artists use it less and less, mainly to bait and switch (patreon). Adult content is out. Fandoms wither because well teenagers grow and abandon this slowly - until the next/new fandom pops up.

Curating is one thing. Make "chinese walls" and prevent teens to access the hard adult stuff, but let them free and it will organically grow again.

We are past the years where teens needed a journal, they've gone to FB/IG for that.

Tumblr is fun if let free. If not, then it will wither further and die.

I can only see Automattic using it as another wordpress, a bit more hip. But still the user geneated content needs to be the free driver, not the gagged driver.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#144

Post by meerita » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 9:58 PM UTC

I guess they're doing this only for the traffic. Because I don't recall any interesting Tumblr to visit. Everything interesting can be found in other places, like Medium or their own hosted websites.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#145

Post by Zanni » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 9:59 PM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #132

IshKebab wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use a different domain then?

This does seem like a stupid simple solution. tumblr.com can continue being SFW, and then there'd be nsfwtumblr.com (or whatever) that contains "the good stuff". Retain account name uniqueness across both domains.

tumblx.com, surely.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#146

Post by TremendousJudge » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 9:59 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #137

mevile wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That choice boggles the mind. Serving ads is hard when there's porn on the site.

If you've got porn on a domain, it doesn't matter if you show ads on porn or not, it doesn't matter if you require age verification, nothing you do will likely matter. What if there was a way to "ban" something by changing it's domain? What if there were two web apps with a linked backend? Let's say: tumblargh.com tumblarghR.com When something is "banned" from tumblargh.com, it remains on tumblarghR.com, which is oth…

isn't this what 4chan did with 4channel.org?

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#147

Post by derefr » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 10:01 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #86

xwdv wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically an exercise in blowing several million dollars.

It's funny the stuff HN fixates on. If all you read is this comment thread, you might actually believe that non-porn Tumblr really is just "an exercise in blowing several million dollars", rather than a concern for a very loud, probably rather small subset of Tumblr users (or rather: former users). What seems at least as likely as "adult content is vital to the future of Tumblr" is that adult content has much more va…

I know that almost all the SFW content creators I know who had a Tumblr blog, have gradually left the platform over the last year. The NSFW content-creators left, and with them dragged away most of the audience for SFW content. The platform is a "dead network" now; the SFW content creators are getting 10x less likes/reblogs than before for their SFW content, because none of their followers (who presumably have both SFW and NSFW interests) checks Tumblr any more, instead having moved onto whatever platform the NSFW content is on (Twitter, I think.)

Think of it this way: a pharmacy sells both prescription drugs and OTC drugs. You can buy OTC drugs from anywhere (e.g. a grocery store, a convenience store, etc.) but you can only get prescription drugs from a pharmacy, so people tend to buy their OTC drugs from pharmacies while they're there for prescription drugs. If your neighbourhood pharmacy decides to stop selling prescription drugs, would you still bother to go there for your OTC drugs? Or would you just buy your OTC drugs from whatever pharmacy you end up now having to go to for your prescription drugs?

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#148

Post by bduerst » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 10:02 PM UTC

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #62

skilled wrote: post #4

Surprised by this news. Tumblr has lost a ton of momentum since its policy change, and the site itself doesn't have a very strong "brand" audience attached to it. Fun fact: I can't recall the last time I either opened a Tumblr link or saw one in the wild. But maybe that's just me.

Every time I go to visit Tumblr, it asks me to log in. If I can't lurk on a content site, I'm moving on.

Is that for mobile only? I can access different tumblr sites w/o login walls.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#149

Post by evanelias » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 10:02 PM UTC

sct202 wrote: post #35

With Verizon selling off chunks of Yahoo like Flickr and Tumblr, what did they even want from Yahoo?

Tim Armstrong somehow convinced Verizon leadership that by combining Yahoo with AOL, they would create a 3rd major player in the ad world that could compete with Google and Facebook.

I will refrain from adding my personal opinion of that plan, but you can probably guess.

In any case, all of the Verizon execs involved in that deal are long gone, and the new Verizon CEO is said to be focused entirely on 5G.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#150

Post by ravenstine » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 10:02 PM UTC

anarchy8 wrote: post #123

ravenstine wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their brand wasn't particularly strong in the first place. Correct me if I'm wrong, but for years it was widely known as a home to porn and people blogging about genders. I never knew anyone personally who hosted anything on Tumblr. Maybe it could be turned around, but it's pretty old-school at this point and seems hardly better to me than MySpace.

And what's wrong with porn and blogging about genders?

I never said there was. The public, on the other hand, isn't necessarily interested in sifting through those kinds of content on a dying platform that many people have long since moved away from. If they want to bring people back to Tumblr at this point, they either need to get rid of the perception that they're a dumping ground for porn, or they've got to completely own it. But that won't happen, because enough people remember that Tumblr tried to expunge all that stuff.