Automattic CEO calls Tumblr his ‘biggest failure’ so far

WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg has called the company’s Tumblr acquisition his biggest failure — but he’s not giving up just yet. This comment was made recently WordCamp Canada 2025 conference, where Mullenweg went live for a town hall session to connect with the open source-focused WordPress community.

The executive noted that Tumblr was still on a different technology stack than WordPress — something he wanted to correct Transfer to the back end WordPress infrastructure. However, that was a massive undertaking keep Earlier this year, moved as costs Tumblr has half a billion blogs The blogging platform was not profitable and would be difficult to sustain by the profits of other automated products.

The company has tried to reduce costs with trimming and reallocating 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 have to change [Tumblr] Up to WordPress, but it’s a big lift. It’s more than 500 million blogs, in fact, and, as a business, it makes more money than it costs to run it.”

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 moved behind WordPress, it would be easier and more cost-effective to maintain. Also, it will enable the service to go further Join the open social web known as FediverseWhich can be an advantage of WordPress migration.

During his speech, Mullenweg discussed other ongoing projects at the company, including WordPress, Jetpack and WooCommerce. He mentions the playground, which gives you Run WordPress entirely in a web browserand automatic The universal messaging app Beeper. The latter will expand to include support for bridges from KakaoTalk and dating apps to other messaging apps, such as messaging services, he said.

He also touched on AI, saying, “We’re not putting the genie back in the bottle” with technology and calling companies like OpenAI “too big to fail.” In one area of ​​the business, WordPress theme directories, he’s thinking of tagging AI-generated images to let people filter their searches appropriately without rejecting AI-generated themes.

Notably, the answer to a question about Mullenweg Legal drama with WP EngineA WordPress hosting company called to profit from the automatic open source ecosystem without giving back. In response to an audience question about bad actors exploiting the community, Mullenweg responded that he didn’t mean “big actors,” but rather “bad karma.”

He suggested that Automate should create more incentive systems to encourage contributions and other good behavior, such as giving certain people high rankings in WordPress directories or showcases. He 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 that’s currently tracking a number of sites that have left a particular host. It’s about to exceed 100,000 … that have moved to another host, and 74,000 have gone offline since September of last year,” he said.

Courts at one point ordered the site taken down, which Mullenweg told the crowd was “trying to stifle free speech and transparency.”