Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg has confirmed that the company is no longer migrating its Tumblr blogging platform to WordPress, as previously announced. Executives shared the news on Verge’s decoder podcast, which was released Monday, saying the project was “pending” indefinitely.
“What we decided is to focus on what’s noticeable to users and what they’re looking for,” he told the site. “It was like an infrastructure, it was like a big restructuring. I still want to do it. It’s just clean. But now we’re not working on it.”
The announcement also raises questions about what this means for Tumblr’s integration with the open social web, known as Fediverse. By migrating the infrastructure to WordPress, it would have become a federated app. Mullenweg acknowledges that it is one of the arguments for making the move, but suggests it is no longer a priority.
“…I think if there’s a big drive to implement Fediverse in the meantime, I’d just do that on a Tumblr codebase,” he said.
Mullenweg also reiterated that Tumblr is not profitable and maintained from the profits of other Automattic products. Still, he said he believes in the future of Tumblr and plans to provide the runway he needs to understand things.
