Automattic CEO Calls Tumblr His ‘Biggest Failure’ So Far

Automattic CEO Calls Tumblr His ‘Biggest Failure’ So Far

Automattic CEO calls Tumblr his ‘biggest failure’ so far — but it’s a failure he isn’t ready to abandon. Matt Mullenweg, who also co-founded WordPress, made the candid admission during the WordCamp Canada 2025 Town Hall session, where he opened up about the challenges of managing the once-popular blogging platform. Image Credits:Tumblr logo Why Tumblr Became A Struggle For Automattic According to Mullenweg, Tumblr has remained on a completely different technical stack from WordPress, something he initially planned to fix by moving Tumblr’s entire back end to WordPress infrastructure. However, that ambitious migration project was paused earlier this year due to the enormous cost of transferring Tumblr’s half-billion blogs. Mullenweg explained that such an effort would be hard to justify financially since Tumblr has not been profitable. Instead, it’s been largely supported by the success of Automattic’s other products, including WordPress.com. Efforts To Save Tumblr Still Ongoing Although Aut…