Shipping Tumblr and WordPress

Since Automattic acquired Tumblr we’ve made it more efficient, grown its revenue, and worked to improve the platform. But there’s one part of the plan that we haven’t yet started, which is to run Tumblr on WordPress. I’m pleased to say we’re kicking off that project now!

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.

Running Tumblr on WordPress will make it easier to share our work across platforms. We can build something once and bring it to both WordPress and Tumblr. We can run Tumblr on the rock-solid infrastructure behind WordPress.com. Tumblr will benefit from the collective effort that goes into the open source WordPress project. And WordPress will benefit from the tools and creativity we invest into Tumblr and contribute back to WordPress.

This won’t be easy. Tumblr hosts over half a billion blogs. We’re talking about one of the largest technical migrations in internet history. Some people think it’s impossible. But we say, “challenge accepted.”

Do you yearn for the days when people owned their corner of the internet and expressed themselves in wild and wacky ways? Do you want to see an internet focused on creativity, art, and ideas instead of debating and dividing? Do you think content and data should be owned by authors and artists, instead of getting locked behind the closed platform of a mega-corporation? Do you want to build an internet where anyone with a story can tell it, and anyone with a product can sell it, regardless of income, gender, politics, language, or where they live in the world?

This is what we’re building at Automattic. We are passionate about making the web a better place. You can see it in our creed and our actions. We’re forming a team of smart, creative people to kick off this project. If you love writing code, eat data for breakfast, and are ready to join the fight for the open web, we want to hear from you!