WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg known as the corporate’s Tumblr acquisition his largest failure — however one he hasn’t given up on but. The feedback have been made on the current WordCamp Canada 2025 convention, the place Mullenweg went dwell for a City Corridor session to attach with the open source-focused WordPress group.

The exec famous that Tumblr was nonetheless on a special technical stack than WordPress — one thing he had supposed to appropriate by migrating the again finish to WordPress infrastructure. Nevertheless, that large enterprise was placed on maintain earlier this yr, as the fee to maneuver Tumblr’s half-billion blogs could be tough on condition that the running a blog platform wasn’t worthwhile and continues to be sustained by the earnings of different Automattic merchandise.

The corporate has tried to trim prices with layoffs and the reallocation of Tumblr sources to extra worthwhile elements of the enterprise, however these efforts have but to repay.

Mullenweg acknowledged these issues at his City Corridor session, saying, “I want to change [Tumblr] over to WordPress, nevertheless it’s a giant carry. It’s over 500 million blogs, really, and, as a enterprise, it’s costing a lot extra to run than it generates in income.”

Consequently, Automattic needed to prioritize different tasks to make Tumblr sustainable, he stated.

“It’s most likely my largest failure or missed alternative proper now, however we’re nonetheless engaged on it,” he added.

If Tumblr have been to maneuver to the WordPress again finish, it will be easier and cheaper to keep up. Plus, it will allow the service to additional be part of the open social internet often called the fediverse, which was to be one perk of the WordPress migration.

Through the course of his speak, Mullenweg mentioned the opposite tasks underway on the firm, together with at WordPress, Jetpack, and WooCommerce. He talked about Playground, which helps you to run WordPress fully in an internet browser, and Automattic’s common messaging app Beeper. The latter can be increasing to incorporate help for bridges to different messaging apps, like KakaoTalk and messaging providers from relationship apps, he stated.

He additionally touched on AI, saying, “We’re not placing the genie again within the bottle” with the expertise, and calling corporations like OpenAI “too huge to fail.” In a single space of the enterprise, the WordPress theme listing, he’s pondering of tagging photos made with AI to permit folks to filter their searches appropriately, reasonably than rejecting AI-generated themes.

Notably, Mullenweg answered a query in regards to the authorized drama with WP Engine, a WordPress internet hosting firm that Automattic has known as out for making the most of the open supply ecosystem with out giving again. In response to an viewers query about unhealthy actors who exploit the group, Mullenweg responded that he didn’t “wish to say that there’s unhealthy actors,” however reasonably “unhealthy actions.”

He instructed that Automattic ought to create extra incentive methods to encourage contributions and different good conduct, like giving sure folks larger rankings within the WordPress listing or showcase. He additionally inspired the group to “vote along with your pockets” by not supporting companies that aren’t doing the suitable factor.

“There’s a website known as WordPressEngineTracker.com which is at present monitoring quite a few websites which have left a sure host. It’s about to cross 100,000 … which have switched to different hosts, and there have been 74,000 have gone offline since September of final yr,” he stated.

The courtroom ordered the positioning taken down at one level, which Mullenweg advised the group was them “making an attempt to muzzle free speech and transparency.”