WordPress co-founder and CEO autoatt CEO Auto Mullenweg called the acquisition of Tumblr the company’s biggest failure – but I’ve never seen it. Comments are made at the end WordCamp Canada 2025 Conference, where Mullenweg will be live for a town hall session to connect with the open source focused WordPress community.
EX noted that Tumblr still has a different technical stack than WordPress – something that was given to correct by Back-end migration to the WordPress infrastructure. However, he did it in a big way put it on Before this year, due to the cost of moving Tumblr is half a billion blogs It will be difficult because the blogging platform is not profitable and continues to be saved by the profits of other Aomattic products.
The company has tried to cut costs With layoffs And the reality of Tumblr’s resources to the more profitable part of the business, but the effort has not paid off.
Mullenweg acknowledged these concerns in a town hall session, saying, “I had to switch (Tumblr) to WordPress, but it’s a big lift. Over 500 million blogs, that’s why, and, well, more to run.”
As a result, Automatist has to prioritize other projects to make Tumblr sustainable, he said.
“You may have had the biggest opportunity or missed it now, but we’re still working on it,” he added.
If Tumblr is going to move behind WordPress, it will be easier and more effective to maintain. In addition, it can enable more services Join the open website known as FEDIESSTEwhich is one estimate that wordpress exists.
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During the talk, Mullenweg discussed other projects the company is working on, including WordPress, Jetpack, and WoOncherce. They call it, the playground, which allows you Run WordPress entirely in a web browser and automaton Universal messaging appSee rank-. The latter will expand to include support from the bridge for other messaging apps, like the KakaoTalal service and messaging from dating apps, he said.
He also touched on Ai, saying “We don’t put the genie back in the bottle” with technology, and the company called it like a failed openai. ” In one area of the business, the WordPress theme directory, they are thinking about image tags created with AI in order to filter searches precisely, instead of rejecting AI-created themes.
Good, mulenweg answers questions about legit drama using wp engineHowever, WordPress hosting companies claim a lot of benefits from an open ecosystem without giving anything back. In response to an audience question about bad actors exploiting the community, mulenweg responded that he didn’t “want to say there are bad actors,” but “evil acts.”
He suggested that Automatis should create more incentive systems to encourage good contributions and behavior, like ranking higher in the WordPress or Showcase directories. He also encourages the community to “vote with your wallet” by not supporting businesses that don’t do the right thing.
“There is a site called WordPressenginetraetracak.com that is now tracking how many sites have abandoned a certain host. About 74,000 were there in September last year,” he said.
The court ordered the site to be taken down at one point, which Mulenweg said was that he was “trying to promote free speech and transparency.”