At WordCamp Canada 2025, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg called Tumblr his “biggest failure,” noting the challenge of maintaining the platform’s half-billion blogs while it remains unprofitable. Though plans to migrate Tumblr to WordPress infrastructure are on hold, Mullenweg said he hasn’t given up.
To be fair, IF tumblr had added the tipping feature while porn was huge on the site, it might have became Onlyfans.
OF wasn’t always a porn site. It was trying to be a Patron that allowed adult content, but it became just a porn site.
I argue something similar would have happened to tumblr