Automattic Ceo Calls Tumblr His ‘biggest Failure’ So Far

WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg called nan company’s Tumblr acquisition his biggest nonaccomplishment — but 1 he hasn’t fixed up connected yet. The comments were made astatine nan caller WordCamp Canada 2025 conference, wherever Mullenweg went unrecorded for a Town Hall convention to link pinch nan unfastened source-focused WordPress community.

The exec noted that Tumblr was still connected a different method stack than WordPress — thing he had intended to correct by migrating nan backmost end to WordPress infrastructure. However, that monolithic undertaking was put connected hold earlier this year, arsenic nan costs to move Tumblr’s half a cardinal blogs would beryllium difficult fixed that nan blogging level wasn’t profitable and continues to beryllium sustained by nan profits of different Automattic products.

The institution has tried to trim costs with layoffs and nan reallocation of Tumblr resources to much profitable parts of nan business, but those efforts person yet to salary off.

Mullenweg acknowledged these concerns astatine his Town Hall session, saying, “I request to move [Tumblr] complete to WordPress, but it’s a large lift. It’s complete 500 cardinal blogs, actually, and, arsenic a business, it’s costing truthful overmuch much to tally than it generates successful revenue.”

As a result, Automattic had to prioritize different projects to make Tumblr sustainable, he said.

“It’s astir apt my biggest nonaccomplishment aliases missed opportunity correct now, but we’re still moving connected it,” he added.

If Tumblr were to move to nan WordPress backmost end, it would beryllium simpler and much costs effective to maintain. Plus, it would alteration nan work to further join nan unfastened societal web known arsenic nan fediverse, which was to beryllium 1 perk of nan WordPress migration.

During nan people of his talk, Mullenweg discussed nan different projects underway astatine nan company, including astatine WordPress, Jetpack, and WooCommerce. He mentioned, Playground, which lets you run WordPress wholly successful a web browser and Automattic’s universal messaging app Beeper. The second will beryllium expanding to see support for bridges to different messaging apps, for illustration KakaoTalk and messaging services from making love apps, he said.

He besides touched connected AI, saying “we’re not putting nan ghost backmost successful nan bottle” pinch nan technology, and calling companies for illustration OpenAI “too large to fail.” In 1 area of nan business, nan WordPress taxable directory, he’s reasoning of tagging images made pinch AI to let group to select their searches appropriately, alternatively than rejecting AI-generated themes.

Notably, Mullenweg answered a mobility astir nan legal play pinch WP Engine, a WordPress hosting institution that Automattic has called retired for profiting from nan unfastened root ecosystem without giving back. In consequence to an assemblage mobility astir bad actors who utilization nan community, Mullenweg responded that he didn’t “want to opportunity that there’s bad actors,” but alternatively “bad actions.”

He suggested that Automattic should create much inducement systems to promote contributions and different bully behavior, for illustration giving definite group higher rankings successful nan WordPress directory aliases showcase. He besides encouraged nan organization to “vote pinch your wallet” by not supporting businesses that aren’t doing nan correct thing.

“There’s a tract called WordPressEngineTracker.com which is presently search a number of sites that person near a definite host. It’s astir to transverse 100,000 … that person switched to different hosts, and location were 74,000 person gone offline since September of past year,” he said.

The tribunal ordered nan tract taken down astatine 1 point, which Mullenweg told nan crowd was them “trying to muzzle free reside and transparency.”