Automattic announced last week its plan to migrate Tumblr to WordPress, a move described as “one of the largest technical migrations in internet his

Automattic is Migrating Tumblr to WordPress

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2024-09-02 18:00:05

Automattic announced last week its plan to migrate Tumblr to WordPress, a move described as “one of the largest technical migrations in internet history.” This move comes after Automattic acquired Tumblr in 2019, marking the company’s biggest acquisition at the time.

During the acquisition, Matt Mullenweg had pointed out that “Tumblr and WordPress have always been very philosophically aligned.” An emerging Tumblr/WordPress plugin and theme ecosystem were on the cards, and Matt said that once Tumblr’s backend is on WordPress, the idea of plugins can be explored.

After the acquisition, Tumblr faced tough times, with Matt revealing last year that it was spending about $30 million more than its annual earnings. The porn ban didn’t help matters, but the Twitter Exodus of early 2023 following Elon Musk’s acquisition of the social media site gave it a sudden boost.

The migration announcement post said, “We’re not talking about changing Tumblr. We’re not turning Tumblr into WordPress. That would defeat the purpose. We acquired Tumblr to benefit from its differences and strengths, not to water it down. We love Tumblr’s streamlined posting experience and its current product direction. We’re not changing that. We’re talking about running Tumblr’s backend on WordPress. You won’t even notice a difference from the outside.”