edit disclaimer: this post represents my personal views and is not necessarily representative of the views of any of my coworkers or anyone else formally associated with anti software software club. i'm just doing me right now.
tumblr effectively going into Maintenance Mode is a huge bummer for me. i had hoped that they would be able to turn it around and make things sustainable (although i often disagreed with how they were going about it) and it's disappointing for me that they couldn't, both as a longtime tumble user and operator of one of the other "less popular" social media platforms.
at this point, tumblr is the only social media platform i don't run that i actually enjoy using1. maintenance mode isn't death, but it's also not promising; tumblr is effectively on a clock now.
tumblr's move to revenue via alternative means (ad-free subscription, blaze, badges, etc) was especially compelling to me. i signed up for the ad-free subscription basically as soon as it became available. like i said, i wanted tumblr to succeed, in no small part because my paycheck is dependent on the success of an optional-subscription-driven social media platform and i really wanted someone else, even if it was someone much larger than us, to show that it's possible2. they failed. doesn't mean we will3 4, but it's not exactly motivating.
the bright side, for me, is that automattic went into this gamble responsibly; they already had plans in place for, in the event tumble couldn't get out of the red, they wouldn't have to lay anyone off. we've had enough massive layoffs over the last year and odds are good we'll have more. tumblr's staff avoiding that fate is genuinely good.
it's been rough seeing all the platform i used to use either dying or becoming unrecognizable over the last year. it's stressful to watch knowing that we could only really support a huge influx of users5 with more staff and that the revenue won't necessarily support that.
as a tumblr user i'm sad. as a subscription-driven social media platform operator i'm nervous. as some guy who wants nothing more than to spend time with their friends and family, do their silly little hobbies, and post jokes on a website, i'm filled with the same dread i've had since elon bought twitter last year and made my life immeasurably more difficult in the process. we know what the path forward is for cohost and ASSC. i do not know what the path forward is for myself. but i'll figure it out.
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although, being honest, the one i do run kinda pushes it sometimes
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amusingly, this is something matt mullenweg talked about when he subscribed to twitter blue. i think he's foolish for thinking that's the best way to go about it, but i still Get It
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part of this is that we have major revenue plans separate from the social media part, namely tipping and subscriptions. these are also huge gambles for us but they're one of the only paths to sustainability
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we also have a much smaller staff, which means much lower expenses. this is both a blessing and a curse; i've been fulltime on tipping and subscriptions for a few months now which means cohost development is dramatically slowed (as it turns out two people working on two features means things happen faster than one person working on one feature). this is also a serious risk we identified when we made the decision to move me onto tipping and subscriptions fulltime, but it's also one of those mandatory risks. even with two developers, we're limited on the sort of work we can do and we're at incredibly high risk of work simply stopping if someone gets seriously ill. we've talked about this extensively before. there's not a lot we can do there other than "suddenly have way more money to a third developer with and also hope that third developer is both Capable and OK With Being Paid Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay Less Than Market Rate For This Work".
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tumblr's press page claims 135 million active users, which is over 4000x our monthly active user count. it would be naive to assume all those users will come to us but realistically even a 10x increase in MAU would start causing serious problems (unless it also came with a 10x increase in revenue but that's probably not happening. i mean a 10x increase in users is also probably not happening but stay with me here.)
