Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tumblr

avc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 107 posts

Re: Tumblr

#41

Post by rolltiide »

tene wrote: post #13
rolltiide wrote: post #5

Diversity of decision making would still help Tumblr. You know in which ways.

I actually have no idea what you're alluding to here; can you be a bit more explicit for us oblivious readers?

Sure,

The CEO of Tumblr David Karp made unilateral decisions which stifled its growth and utility. Any additional decision making input would have helped here, but qualified women, minorities and people accompanying David, Fred (the author of this article) and Marco (1st engineer) would have greatly helped so the winds here. Be more in tune with the audience that grew.

After the second sale to Verizon, after David left, different leadership could have understood how the erotic content community was flourishing on Tumblr in ways that the erotic industry has failed to attract. Many women liked tumblr for porn sharing, browsing, and curating because other porn-specific sites have unclean interfaces and distracting ads. There were people that could have told them that in the decision making process, and helped navigate the issues encountered since that is what was driving engagement.

Automattic also seems to fail to understand this, with CEO Matt Mullenweg's explanation seeming to complete miss the point, and looks more like a pet project than any interest in engagement.

Re: Tumblr

#42

Post by SolaceQuantum »

navigatesol wrote: post #30
codesushi42 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no good, open alternatives that are widely used.

"Stuck" is a slight exaggeration. I can still punch whatever I want into my address bar. Why is "widely used" required? Do you search/discover through Tumblr?

Before a bunch of artists were driven off tumblr due to the overly strict adult policy (the appeals process etc. was too much of a pain) Tumblr was my go-to for a lot of artists in the niches I followed. Through this, I found a ton of communities- fandoms for the characters created by the artists, collective worldbuilding, etc. Also, within niche fandoms I followed I also found artists that produced wonderful works.

There's still an ongoing webcomic (A Tale of Two Rulers) that's a world where Zelda and Gannon choose to marry instead of war on tumblr. It's incredibly awesome and part of what I'm on tumblr for.

Re: Tumblr

#43

Post by _bxg1 »

laser wrote: post #14

I had heard the "well below 20m" figure and couldn't believe it—and now Fred is saying they dumped it for $3 million? I suppose if Verizon is taking the tax deduction on an original $1.1 billion purchase by Yahoo, the value of the deduction so much dwarfs the sale price that the difference to Yahoo between a $3 million sale price and a $50 million sale price is pretty minimal—they just want to close the deal to take…

Verizon didn't just fail to figure out what to do with Tumblr, it dealt what was nearly a death blow by changing its policy on adult content - one of the platform's biggest remaining pillars of core users. Tumblr doesn't still exist because of its features; it exists because of its communities. Leave it to Verizon to not just starve a golden goose, but shoot it in the head.

Re: Tumblr

#44

Post by IB885588 »

_bxg1 wrote: post #43
laser wrote: post #14

I had heard the "well below 20m" figure and couldn't believe it—and now Fred is saying they dumped it for $3 million? I suppose if Verizon is taking the tax deduction on an original $1.1 billion purchase by Yahoo, the value of the deduction so much dwarfs the sale price that the difference to Yahoo between a $3 million sale price and a $50 million sale price is pretty minimal—they just want to close the deal to take…

Verizon didn't just fail to figure out what to do with Tumblr, it dealt what was nearly a death blow by changing its policy on adult content - one of the platform's biggest remaining pillars of core users. Tumblr doesn't still exist because of its features; it exists because of its communities. Leave it to Verizon to not just starve a golden goose, but shoot it in the head.

This is exactly what happened. Verizon probably didn't know that most of the traffic they were buying were because of adult content, and then they killed that. I wish they had sold it to Pornhub instead.

Re: Tumblr

#45

Post by Mirioron »

tryitnow wrote: post #38

Should we start entertaining the admittedly simple-minded notion that it is not tumblr that is under-valued, but everything else is over-valued?

I think this is very likely. The only way I can see companies like Twitter being worth as much as they are is their potential political power. A company like Twitter has a lot of influence over that, but I don't think they create such an enormous amount of value.

Re: Tumblr

#46

Post by scarface74 »

laser wrote: post #14

I had heard the "well below 20m" figure and couldn't believe it—and now Fred is saying they dumped it for $3 million? I suppose if Verizon is taking the tax deduction on an original $1.1 billion purchase by Yahoo, the value of the deduction so much dwarfs the sale price that the difference to Yahoo between a $3 million sale price and a $50 million sale price is pretty minimal—they just want to close the deal to take…

Yahoo proved that page views don’t really mean much. Yahoo was always one of the top ten sites but hasn’t been able to monetize its traffic for years.

Re: Tumblr

#47

Post by untog »

_bxg1 wrote: post #43
laser wrote: post #14

I had heard the "well below 20m" figure and couldn't believe it—and now Fred is saying they dumped it for $3 million? I suppose if Verizon is taking the tax deduction on an original $1.1 billion purchase by Yahoo, the value of the deduction so much dwarfs the sale price that the difference to Yahoo between a $3 million sale price and a $50 million sale price is pretty minimal—they just want to close the deal to take…

Verizon didn't just fail to figure out what to do with Tumblr, it dealt what was nearly a death blow by changing its policy on adult content - one of the platform's biggest remaining pillars of core users. Tumblr doesn't still exist because of its features; it exists because of its communities. Leave it to Verizon to not just starve a golden goose, but shoot it in the head.

According to Matt Mullenweg, that's not true:

> One of the things that really surprised me is I thought — as probably many do — that Tumblr had kind of died under its variety of corporate parents. And then actually being able to see some of the numbers, including some the numbers post-when they changed the adult content policy. I was like, “Wow, this has still got a ton going on.”

https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/14/20804894/tumblr-acquisiti...

Re: Tumblr

#48

Post by scarface74 »

markandrewj wrote: post #18
aylmao wrote: post #6

> But it is also true that Tumblr was bypassed by native mobile applications like Instagram and Snapchat where it was even easier to post about your life. This. It's understated how much Tumblr's clunky composing hurt it as a platform. I know people connected to Tumblr, and from what I hear there was a lot of ideas but little direction. There was a time when Tumblr was bigger than Instagram— Tumblr could've focused m…

I think you are talking about current developments, but it is worth mentioning that when Twitter launched it was just as flip phones started to be replaced by smartphones. Most people were interacting with the service through SMS. To me, it felt like the progress with further developing tumblr slowed after Marco Arment moved onto other projects. From a historic perspective, this may an interesting article to some peo…

Tumblr has given my family a strong safety net and given me the freedom to work on whatever I want. And that’s exactly what I plan to do.

Rumors are that he made $5-$7 million. But he definitely made enough to have f%%#-you money.

Re: Tumblr

#49

Post by lowdose »

mbesto wrote: post #40
laser wrote: post #14

I had heard the "well below 20m" figure and couldn't believe it—and now Fred is saying they dumped it for $3 million? I suppose if Verizon is taking the tax deduction on an original $1.1 billion purchase by Yahoo, the value of the deduction so much dwarfs the sale price that the difference to Yahoo between a $3 million sale price and a $50 million sale price is pretty minimal—they just want to close the deal to take…

> said on here the other day about adopting a "Berkshire model" This is not the Berkshire model at all. Berkshire buys businesses that have high cash flow models where money can compound over and over, usually in well established businesses that have operational issues that can be optimized for cash flow. > Just monetizing the web traffic 2.5 billions monthly hits at a $1 CPM alone would generate $2.5 million a month…

Yep, DCF is all about the multiplier.

Re: Tumblr

#50

Post by azinman2 »

“Tumblr was an example of how to do social media right and we can learn a lot from it.“

Except it lost, so by definition it can’t be right.

Update: there are clearly many definitions of right. Here I’m using right in the sense that it gets mass adoption (right in that people prefer it), and right in the sense that it also simultaneously does net positive for the world. Achieving both is difficult.

Post reply on HN