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Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

wsj.com

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Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#261

Post by mikeschinkel »

evanelias wrote: post #193
joshmn wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thank you for asking, but I probably shouldn't get into that :) I'm inherently conflicted / biased due to designing a solid chunk of Tumblr's backend, and also previously worked for another Automattic competitor (Six Apart, the defunct company behind Movable Type). Edit to avoid anyone misconstruing, I'm not trying to imply one thing or another, just that I can't approach this impartially. And in any case, I wish eve…

Just curious about your just curious; what is the architecture of the current Tumblr back end?

This appears to be 6 years old. Is it still relevant?

http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/2/13/tumblr-architectur...

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#262

Post by nopriorarrests »

rxhernandez wrote: post #258
nopriorarrests wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's not illogical at all, that's mainly who I see in Porsche dealerships and nothing about that contradicts what I said. I don't know, I think signaling is OK, and I don't consider people why buy signaling products as "vain dumb and insecure". I just don't see that anything wrong with that. I mean, you made enough money to choose good, quality product, be that t-shirt, bike or even a car. Why not choose some prem…

I'm not saying signaling is wrong; I'm saying to the EXTENT that someone cares so much that they wouldn't buy it because there may be porn associated alongside it, is a symptom of being in the set of vain, insecure, and young and dumb people. I own a Porsche, I couldn't care less who they are advertising to so long as it doesn't hurt anyone. Moreover, I've learned with anything that attracts that much attention, it's…

Well, I get that you want the world to function in a slightly different way, and you don't want people to associate advertised product to content around it; I'm fine with that. However, the world around us functions in a way where people subconsciously associate the product and content.

This is, in fact, a billion dollar opportunity -- ads on porn sites are so abundant and so cheap, first person who will help sell more premium product by advertising it on porn sites will become a billionaire. Not happened yet, and most porn sites advertise, well, other porn sites. There might be a reason for that (and it's not a hidden cabal of puritans who run marketing departments of well-known brands being haters of porn. trust me, those folks will sell their souls to the devil for 10% uptick in sales).

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#263

Post by basch »

umeshunni wrote: post #229
basch wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yahoo still has some strong brand recognition in some sectors, and COULD make a massive comeback if Verizon made the right moves. Yahoo Finance, Yahoo News, Yahoo Fantasy, Yahoo Email/Messenger. Verizon should release a WhatsApp, FBMessenger, iMessage competitor and let you pick if you want it to be Verizon, Yahoo, or AIM themed. Nostalgia is all the rage. Being able to use AIM (like facebook chat at the bottom of a…

No one outside the US has heard of Verizon and most of the products (whatsapp, messenger) you named have the majority of their users outside the US. Most internet users today have also not heard of or have any nostalgia for Yahoo Messenger or AIM.

have most people heard of Verizon OR Yahoo OR AOL or ICQ? They are sitting on a bunch of brand names that DO have some sort of recognition.

If facebook can have three separately branded interoperable products, why cant someone else try. They can market the four products to different markets with different aesthetics, and under the hood, its one messenger base. Verizon absolutely has the power to force and plow themselves into the market through sheer will and stubbornness.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#264

Post by sequoia »

CW Old man comment: I tried to use tumblr years ago but the UI was so baffling I quickly gave up. Specifically: I never knew what would happen if I clicked on something. Does this “favorite” the post? Reblog it? Take me to the users page? How do I see the original post page (not the reblog)? How do I see the 6000 people who responded to this post?

Maximal violation of principal of least surprise. I could never figure anything out so I gave up.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#265

Post by macintux »

romwell wrote: post #20

So, the real question is: are the censorship policies going to be reversed? To be specific, is adult content going to be kosher on Tumblr again? Because if not, I'd have very little faith in the platform (and I do have an account there).

I suspect a contributory aspect is the flagrant copyright violation which went hand-in-hand with the vast majority of the adult content on Tumblr.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#266

Post by 8ytecoder »

mevile wrote: post #120
ethbro wrote: post #55

Earlier 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…

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

As long as content is flagged and companies can block their ads from content they find objectionable it would’ve been fine.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#267

Post by evanelias »

mikeschinkel wrote: post #261
evanelias wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for asking, but I probably shouldn't get into that :) I'm inherently conflicted / biased due to designing a solid chunk of Tumblr's backend, and also previously worked for another Automattic competitor (Six Apart, the defunct company behind Movable Type). Edit to avoid anyone misconstruing, I'm not trying to imply one thing or another, just that I can't approach this impartially. And in any case, I wish eve…

Just curious about your just curious; what is the architecture of the current Tumblr back end? This appears to be 6 years old. Is it still relevant? http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/2/13/tumblr-architectur...

Ehhh parts of that article were never accurate, especially the stuff about having an hbase-powered dashboard feed.

Primarily the product backend is monolithic PHP (custom framework) + services in various languages + sharded MySQL + Memcached + Gearman. Lots of other technologies in use though too, but I'll defer to current employees if they want to answer.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#268

Post by rxhernandez »

nopriorarrests wrote: post #262
rxhernandez wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying signaling is wrong; I'm saying to the EXTENT that someone cares so much that they wouldn't buy it because there may be porn associated alongside it, is a symptom of being in the set of vain, insecure, and young and dumb people. I own a Porsche, I couldn't care less who they are advertising to so long as it doesn't hurt anyone. Moreover, I've learned with anything that attracts that much attention, it's…

Well, I get that you want the world to function in a slightly different way, and you don't want people to associate advertised product to content around it; I'm fine with that. However, the world around us functions in a way where people subconsciously associate the product and content. This is, in fact, a billion dollar opportunity -- ads on porn sites are so abundant and so cheap, first person who will help sell mo…

It's not that I want the world to function in that way, it's that sex is such a fundamental part of our biological nature that I believe it supersedes any human abstractions we place over our animal nature; to the extent where, the unworkable symbiosis you posited, of porn associated with the advertising of well known brands, is wanting the world to work in a different way than it actually does. More succinctly, just because advertisers haven't done it well, doesn't mean it can't be done.

In fact, as this generation of baby boomers dies off, I have a strong feeling porn will become far more normalized and have more prestigious non-porn brands associated with it, so long as more prestigious porn brands can rise up.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#269

Post by SolarNet »

djsumdog wrote: post #213
ethbro wrote: post #55

Earlier 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…

Well remember what actually happened. Apple removed their app! That's a bigger problem in general (I think at some point, legislators will need to force Apple to allow 3rd party installs without jailbreaking a phone). Tumblr had issues with jailbait and childporn. Even with a lot of moderation and policing, it was difficult to keep under control. As an interesting consequence, people who use scripts to rip entire blo…

> Tumblr had issues with jailbait and childporn. Even with a lot of moderation and policing, it was difficult to keep under control.

That's because they had crappy design:

* How does one report a post? Click the share button (I'm not clicking something labeled share on child porn).

* Can moderators delete posts and the comment chain that allows for coordination? Nope, just the images.

Doesn't matter how moderation one does if the tools aren't there.

Re: Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

#270

Post by georgestephanis »

evanelias wrote: post #167
photomatt wrote: post #11

I'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 have no idea precisely what we're going to do or how, but if I were spitballing, I'd think something like ...

Currently I think Tumblr stores all posts across all sites in one big table? WP.com does different tables per site.

I also think Tumblr's post ids are often above php's int max for 32-bit systems ( 2,147,483,647 ) -- I know I've seen some issues trying to parse tumblr's post ids to integers rather than strings on some old servers years ago.

For an overview of how our systems are run here's Barry, our head sysadmin, talking about six years ago on how the wpcom infastructure is structured:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57EJ8KDDBH0

It's changed somewhat, but not much conceptually. It's a really fascinating talk and I'd encourage anyone curious on massive scale data to give it a look, and see precisely what can be managed with determination and mysql and coffee.

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