Despite delays, the master plan in order to connect Tumblr’s site that is blogging the wider world of decentralized social media, also known as the “fediverse,” is still on, it seems. The protocol powering Twitter/X rival Mastodon and other decentralized social apps over a year ago, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg — whose company acquired Tumblr from Verizon in 2019 — posted on Twitter that the site would “soon” add support for ActivityPub. But as time lapsed since that pronouncement, it absolutely wasn’t obvious if Tumblr ended up being nonetheless transferring that path.
To Complicate matters further, Tumblr recently cut a true number of staff, relocating many to other projects within its parent company Automattic, which runs WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Pocket Casts and more, including the recently acquired Texts.com. The re-org was meant to ease the pressures that are financial happens to be under, whilst the web site proceeded to get rid of cash. But it addittionally led numerous advocates that are fediverse wonder if Tumblr’s plans to join the world of decentralized social media had also been scrapped.
In addition, a post by a Tumblr employee seemed to indicate the project was now on the back burner as they said the plan that is fediverse already been relocated to Tumblr’s evaluating reasons, Tumblr Labs.
Now, CEO Matt Mullenweg is clearing the condition of Tumblr’s fediverse aspirations in an AMA (Ask me personally something) provided on their Tumblr that is own blog. In response to a question from For Millionaires, Mullenweg explained that despite the re-org, which will see many Tumblr employees move to other projects at the end of the year, Automattic did switch someone over to Tumblr to work on the integration that is fediverse that will carry on when you look at the brand new year.
Still, Mullenweg cautioned that, thus far, Automattic hadn’t however seen user that is outsized for federated social media.
“The Activity Pub and Friends plugins for WordPress are both from Automatticians, and have allowed us space to play in this space and understand the community and protocols, and user that is also gauge,” Mullenweg wrote. “Right today both have actually under ten thousand people, generally there has actuallyn’t already been a user that is big for this yet,” he noted.
But he said that folks will “dig into Tumblr’s codebase” to see what it can do about moving forward with federation.
Reading between the lines, it seems the company isn’t ready to place a bet that is full ActivityPub — though Mullenweg typically aids a far more available net.
“I stay a massive believer in available criteria and individual freedom, we will support everything we can in good faith to give users more freedom, choice, and avoid lock-in,” he also said in his AMA though I don’t claim to have the truth on which particular standard is better or best, to serve our customers. (Mullenweg told us earlier in the year the company was also evaluating other protocols, like Bluesky’s AT Protocol and nostr, for what it worth that is’s.
Though Mastodon these days has only around 1.5 million monthly active users, ActivityPub is witnessing even more energy at the time of belated — specifically given that Instagram Threads, another Twitter/X competition, is integration that is pledging the fediverse. Many in the community expect that to arrive in the part that is early of. When you look at the meantime, Threads users have the ability to confirm their particular profile on Mastodon as an step that is initial. Other startups, like the app that is mozilla-backed and indie apps like Ivory, have established to help make the fediverse more approachable for newcomers, while businesses like Flipboard and moderate have actually welcomed Mastodon, also. Which could provide Tumblr a needed push in 2024 to find out if ActivityPub may be worth its time, and whether or perhaps not it’ll make sense that is technological bring Tumblr blogs to Mastodon.
In other words, even though there’s work being done on Tumblr’s integrations that are fediverse it is not even close to being a done offer today.
In another AMA response, Mullunweg additionally noted that a more substantial work to migrate Tumblr’s half a billion blog sites to WordPress regarding the backend is something he’s also contemplating when you look at the year that is newWe’re going to handle it, but I’m perhaps not yes whenever,” the exec stated.
