A leaked internal memo from Matt Mullenweg to the staff at Tumblr outlined plans to shift employees out of Tumblr to other teams in Automattic and run Tumblr on with significantly reduced staffing.
Matt Mullenweg subsequently confirmed that the leak was genuine and offered an explanation of what’s going on with Tumblr.
Tumblr Not Earning Enough
The bottom line with Tumblr is that the turnaround they were working toward never materialized and is subsequently not earning at the levels they had planned to reach.
Tumblr was purchased from Verizon for $3 million dollars in 2019. Verizon had acquired Tumblr from their acquisition of Yahoo, which had purchased Tumblr for $1.1 billion dollars years earlier.
The price was right but Automattic is said by Mullenweg to have spent $100 million dollars trying to turn Tumblr around.
But that never happened.
What’s Happening To Tumblr Employees
The leaked memo and subsequent tumblr post by Mullenweg explained that 139 employees from the product side of Tumblr will have the chance to choose other jobs at Automattic.
Employees in the Customer Support and the Trust and Safety teams can remain at Tumblr, there are no plans to let them go.
Mullenweg’s statement he made references to various teams at Tumblr by their internal names.