Tumblr results are disappointing, marketing department is scaling down

After four years, Tumblr has not been able to become a profitable platform, says Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of Tumblr owner Automattic. As a result, the platform’s product and marketing department will scale down.

Of the 139 employees at the department, a small number will continue to work after the end of this year. Most of the product and marketing staff move to other departments, Mullenweg writes on Thursday. He responds to that an internal memo circulating on social media platform Threads and confirms its authenticity. The memo was drawn up last month, but according to the CEO, the staff has long been prepared for the possibility of being transferred to other departments. The employees in customer service and the trust and safety department will remain with the product and marketing department.

“We’ve been working on Tumblr for over four years with about 200 full-time people. We’ve also spent over $100 million in excess of revenue trying to improve the site, but that hasn’t worked yet,” Mullenweg explains. That’s why the CEO wants the staff to focus mainly on ‘running Tumblr in the most efficient way possible’.

Automattic acquired Tumblr from Verizon in 2019 for less than $3 million. The microblogging platform was already in dire straits when Verizon wanted to sell it off. Tumblr had 450 million blogs at the time, but the growth had stopped and the platform was making a loss. Earlier this year, Mullenweg said according to Techcrunch that the platform makes losses of 30 million dollars annually.