With Verizon selling off chunks of Yahoo like Flickr and Tumblr, what did they even want from Yahoo?
> what did they even want from Yahoo?
They wanted Yahoo itself... not the random acquisitions that Yahoo made for no good reason
Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic
171–180 of 474 posts
Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic
#172I see this as great news; my first reaction to hearing it was excitement. A lot of comments here are talking about the porn but outside of that, tumblr has a community with a uniquely sardonic sense of humor and is a platform for a host of independent artists and creators, and I would be incredibly sad to see it die. IMO Automattic will make for decent stewards of the platform (hell, anybody would be better than Veri…
Thank you — the combined teams will do our best to make your optimism deserved.
Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
> a very loud, probably rather small subset of Tumblr users (or rather: former users) Well, according to this chart (which I have only cursorily vetted), it seems there are a lot of "former users": https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/af9rwu/oc_... It shows that as of Jan, 2019, there were about 50% as many users as when the ban was announced. That would suggest that there are as many "former users" as t…
The assumption that Tumblr's loss of users is entirely or even mostly due to suppressing adult content is probably unwarranted, but I'd be interested in data either way.
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Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
That choice boggles the mind. If you're worried about cross-links between non-adult and adult content tarnishing the platform, add better features for user flagging. They (before the Yahoo and Verizon cluster&#-1s) were essentially sitting on a gold mine of training data, and ongoing training data generation, for an industry-leading porn detection engine. A subscription filtering product that would be worth $$$. Thro…
Are you worried that there's not enough porn on the internet already?
You shouldn't equal what tumblr considers to be "adult content" to "porn".
Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nope. >Mr. Mullenweg said his company intends to maintain the existing policy that bans adult content. He said he has long been a Tumblr user and sees the site as complementary to WordPress.com. “It’s just fun,” he said of Tumblr. “We’re not going to change any of that.”
That choice boggles the mind. If you're worried about cross-links between non-adult and adult content tarnishing the platform, add better features for user flagging. They (before the Yahoo and Verizon cluster&#-1s) were essentially sitting on a gold mine of training data, and ongoing training data generation, for an industry-leading porn detection engine. A subscription filtering product that would be worth $$$. Thro…
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Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic
#176Medium isn't the Medium it used to be. WordPress.com and Tumblr are now controlled by the same outfit. Then there's Blogger, a Google toy. How long before someone else sees opportunity in current limited amount of choice for blogging consumers?
I've seen it already.
Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nope. >Mr. Mullenweg said his company intends to maintain the existing policy that bans adult content. He said he has long been a Tumblr user and sees the site as complementary to WordPress.com. “It’s just fun,” he said of Tumblr. “We’re not going to change any of that.”
That choice boggles the mind. If you're worried about cross-links between non-adult and adult content tarnishing the platform, add better features for user flagging. They (before the Yahoo and Verizon cluster&#-1s) were essentially sitting on a gold mine of training data, and ongoing training data generation, for an industry-leading porn detection engine. A subscription filtering product that would be worth $$$. Thro…
What qualifies as "better"? Twitter has pretty great user flagging, but I still get uncensored porn from people who are not followed by anyone I know in my 'Your Highlights' email, and I have safe settings enabled. I'd say even one exposure to that is enough to put off users. Or the parents of users.
Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic
#178I'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.
According 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/
I'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.
Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Sure, it's the former users that are complaining rather than the current users. The problem is that the Tumblr with its current set of users and current policies are what make it a boring and uninteresting place to go on the web. Tumblr was a hot property specifically because of the former users, and if the site doesn't try to get them back it will become something reminiscent of Digg and Myspace- something to be loo…
One thing I’ve noticed with the Tumblr migration, is that I’ve switched to hard core porn.
With Tumblr I had my lists of soft things where there was a lot left to imagine. Some of them are still online, proof they were supersoft. But I had to surf away and I can’t find mild ones. All because some überentity wants to sanitize and cleanse the world. And drove all the softporn to Instagram, where the everyday girl poses, which... is worse for the masses. And is less easy to browse.
If anything, closing Tumblr has driven my habits to way worse, and I’d bet we’re hundreds of thousands in this situation. As much for sanitizing society.
Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm curious why you would choose to maintain Verizon's policy changes that alienated the majority of the user-base.
They only paid $20 million. Buying a brand name and some domain relevant developers for that little is probably a good deal.
wow, 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.