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Title: Automattic CEO Calls Tumblr His 'Biggest Failure' So Far

Link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/10/21/2334...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: WordPress co-founder and
Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg called the company's Tumblr acquisition his
biggest failure -- but one he hasn't given up on yet. The comments were made
at the recent WordCamp Canada 2025 conference, where Mullenweg went live for
a Town Hall session to connect with the open source-focused WordPress
community. The exec noted that Tumblr was still on a different technical
stack than WordPress -- something he had intended to correct by migrating the
back end to WordPress infrastructure. However, that massive undertaking was
put on hold earlier this year, as the cost to move Tumblr's half-billion
blogs would be difficult given that the blogging platform wasn't profitable
and continues to be sustained by the profits of other Automattic products.
The company has tried to trim costs with layoffs and the reallocation of
Tumblr resources to more profitable parts of the business, but those efforts
have yet to pay off. Mullenweg acknowledged these concerns at his Town Hall
session, saying, "I need to switch [Tumblr] over to WordPress, but it's a big
lift. It's over 500 million blogs, actually, and, as a business, it's costing
so much more to run than it generates in revenue." As a result, Automattic
had to prioritize other projects to make Tumblr sustainable, he said. "It's
probably my biggest failure or missed opportunity right now, but we're still
working on it," he added.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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