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.
If Tumblr were to move to the WordPress back end, it would be simpler and more cost-effective to maintain. Plus, it would enable the service to further join the open social web known as the fediverse, which was to be one perk of the WordPress migration.
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Google Cloud, Netflix, Microsoft, Box, Phia, a16z, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Hugging Face, Elad Gil, Vinod Khosla — some of the 250+ heavy hitters leading 200+ sessions designed to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. And don’t miss 300+ showcasing startups in all sectors. Bring a +1 and save 60% on their pass, or get your pass by Oct 27 to save up to $444.
During the course of his talk, Mullenweg discussed the other projects underway at the company, including at WordPress, Jetpack, and WooCommerce. He mentioned Playground, which lets you run WordPress entirely in a web browser, and Automattic’s universal messaging app Beeper. The latter will be expanding to include support for bridges to other messaging apps, like KakaoTalk and messaging services from dating apps, he said.
He also touched on AI, saying, “We’re not putting the genie back in the bottle” with the technology, and calling companies like OpenAI “too big to fail.” In one area of the business, the WordPress theme directory, he’s thinking of tagging images made with AI to allow people to filter their searches appropriately, rather than rejecting AI-generated themes.
Notably, Mullenweg answered a question about the legal drama with WP Engine, a WordPress hosting company that Automattic has called out for profiting from the open source ecosystem without giving back. In response to an audience question about bad actors who exploit the community, Mullenweg responded that he didn’t “want to say that there’s bad actors,” but rather “bad actions.”
He suggested that Automattic should create more incentive systems to encourage contributions and other good behavior, like giving certain people higher rankings in the WordPress directory or showcase. He also encouraged the community to “vote with your wallet” by not supporting businesses that aren’t doing the right thing.
“There’s a site called WordPressEngineTracker.com which is currently tracking a number of sites that have left a certain host. It’s about to cross 100,000 … that have switched to other hosts, and there were 74,000 have gone offline since September of last year,” he said.
The court ordered the site taken down at one point, which Mullenweg told the crowd was them “trying to muzzle free speech and transparency.”