#On it’s face it sounds charitably completely boneheaded

[pepsinister]

Lots of reactions to today’s Staff post, so here’s another one in the ring.

I’m not so alarmist as to think that the changes Staff laid out today are going to kill tumblr, I think they’ll annoy most of us and drop a few users but ultimately blow over because they’re less egregious than what every other site is up to right now. Also, even though I don’t like the changes, I do like the way Staff is publicizing them.

But I do see a clear pattern in Tumblr’s recent moves - bolder merchandise marketing via Emporium, scrambling for engagement metrics with Tumblr Live, more aggressive prompts to sign in to see content, etcetera. Some members of staff have even publicly said outright that tumblr needs to start making money. What this pattern tells me is that Tumblr as a business entity has probably been given a deadline by which to become profitable or at least financially break even, and what we’re seeing is an aggressive push to meet that goal.

I don’t think Tumblr is going to work out the secret recipe to profitable social media, nobody except Facebook ever has, and nobody else is in the niche that Facebook is in. The secret recipe probably just doesn’t exist outside of that niche. Everything else that any of us do on social media is costing somebody a TON of money that they want to one day recoup.

So my guess is that Tumblr is going to shut down in the near future, not because of these unpopular changes but the other way around.

#other thoughts: #the various fediverses springing up are cool but I don’t expect them to last #not at large scale at least #they’re just taking the social media profitability problem and dividing it up into little unprofitable chunks #other other thoughts: #Reddit’s CEO said last month that they’re not profitable AND that he wants to follow Musk’s Twitter strategy #On it’s face it sounds charitably completely boneheaded #but maybe to a non-layperson perspective Musk is making the right moves? #which would make Twitter maybe the BEST CASE scenario for non-Facebook social media #which is. sad. #Also. I don’t mean ‘near future’ as in like next week. probably a year or two. or more or less #Also also. I’m just some guy! Would be thrilled to be wrong here