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

61–70 of 107 posts

Re: Tumblr

#61

Post by newen »

errantspark wrote: post #57
untog wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/2019/8/14/2…

https://www.statista.com/statistics/261925/unique-visitors-t... Yeah ok, whatever. I don't doubt that it's still a viable business, I don't care. I feel a deep pain every time I think about it. Something beautiful was destroyed with no remorse. The world is worse off because of it. It feels like tearing down statues of the buddha. The one place on the internet where one could explore explicit sexuality without feelin…

It's just porn, chill

Re: Tumblr

#62

Post by aussieguy1234 »

As a long time Tumblr user, it's sad to see it's downfall.

I had hope that Automattic would change the content policies that brought the site down, but it seems that won't be the case.

But the fun isn't over just yet. I've launched Libr (https://librapp.com) to replace Tumblr. It's an installable Progressive Web App, getting around app store rules (recall when the Apple app store banned Tumblr).

There's a few hundred users on there that have given me good feedback on improving Libr and it's starting to slowly take off, although I'm not in any hurry and I'm taking my time to make it awesome before turning on the floodgates.

Re: Tumblr

#63

Post by ptest1 »

In 2017, Tumblr had ~400 employees. If each employee had a modest $50k retention bonus, that’s at least an additional $20M. So I’m not sure the total cost for the purchase as $3M- maybe that was just for the corporate assets.

Re: Tumblr

#64

Post by chipotle_coyote »

IB885588 wrote: post #44
_bxg1 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Verizon didn't buy Tumblr. Verizon bought Yahoo/Oath and ended up with Tumblr. It's a very different scenario.

It's important to remember that Tumblr never turned a profit; as far as I've been able to determine it never hit the break-even point. And the bottom line is that a giant service that's losing money is worse to own than a tiny service that's losing money. Verizon's attempt to kick out the NSFW parts wasn't simple-mindedness or prudishness, it was a calculated risk that a smaller but SFW Tumblr might be able to at least make enough money to pay for itself.

Having said that, it's also important to note that Tumblr still gets a lot of traffic; by most measures it's still in the top 100 most visited sites on the Internet, and gets more traffic than Wordpress.com -- Automattic's closest "competing" product -- does.

Re: Tumblr

#65

Post by henrikschroder »

laser wrote: post #20
jartelt wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming you want to keep Tumblr running, you are also buying the ~200 employees and the costs of running the site. Assuming the 200 employees cost $100k each (salary + benefits) and you are already at $20M in costs.

If I bought Tumblr in a $3 million fire sale, I don't think I'd keep 200 employees on the payroll, but yes, it combined with the tax write-off and infrastructure costs it's reasonable for Yahoo to want to dump it as fast as possible—they could easily be losing $5M a month on it. I'm just shocked there aren't more opportunists in the market that would have bid the price up to at least something resembling reasonable.…

> it's reasonable for Yahoo to want to dump it

Verizon, not Yahoo.

Re: Tumblr

#66

Post by henrikschroder »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #64
IB885588 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Verizon didn't buy Tumblr. Verizon bought Yahoo/Oath and ended up with Tumblr. It's a very different scenario. It's important to remember that Tumblr never turned a profit; as far as I've been able to determine it never hit the break-even point. And the bottom line is that a giant service that's losing money is worse to own than a tiny service that's losing money. Verizon's attempt to kick out the NSFW parts wasn't s…

> Verizon bought Yahoo/Oath

Verizon had ATH - AOL, TechCrunch, Huffington Post, then bought and added yahoO to the group, hence the name.

Yes, that is exactly how uninspired these corporate names are.

Re: Tumblr

#67

Post by avip »

Mr. Wilson's understanding of Tumblr is flawed [0]. There's a simple objective test (now irrelevant) to tell if a platform is largely about porn or not:

[required ingredients: 1 searchable user-content platform, 1 keyboard, 1 daughter (optional)]

0. Go to thing

1. Open search bar

2. Open your hand

3. Hit keyboard with an open flat hand

4. Enter

5. Browse results - count how many you feel comfortable with your daughter being portrayed in

6. 50% is your thresh.

Tumblr was a successful porn platform. Take that off the equation and you're left with nothing.

[0] https://avc.com/2016/07/trashing-tumblr/

Re: Tumblr

#69

Post by zrobotics »

aussieguy1234 wrote: post #62

As a long time Tumblr user, it's sad to see it's downfall. I had hope that Automattic would change the content policies that brought the site down, but it seems that won't be the case. But the fun isn't over just yet. I've launched Libr ( https://librapp.com ) to replace Tumblr. It's an installable Progressive Web App, getting around app store rules (recall when the Apple app store banned Tumblr). There's a few hundr…

Please fix your site- it breaks the back button. This looked interesting, but I immediately hate any site that breaks back-button functionality; and once I notice that I instantly assume either malicious intent or incompetence.

I get that it's a PWA, but can't the welcome page just be a regular page?

Re: Tumblr

#70

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

newen wrote: post #61
errantspark wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/261925/unique-visitors-t... Yeah ok, whatever. I don't doubt that it's still a viable business, I don't care. I feel a deep pain every time I think about it. Something beautiful was destroyed with no remorse. The world is worse off because of it. It feels like tearing down statues of the buddha. The one place on the internet where one could explore explicit sexuality without feelin…

It's just porn, chill

No, it specifically wasn't just porn; it was all adult content. Including anything about sex, including educational stuff.
Post reply on HN