Tumblr’s CEO, Mullenweg has disclosed the company spends around $30 million more annually than it makes in revenue.
The blogging platform, which was founded in 2007, was purchased for $1 billion in 2013 by Yahoo, but in 2019, WordPress parent company Automattic purchased Tumblr for just $3 million.
Tumblr has a devoted following of power users, but since its infamous porn ban, it has struggled to increase the number of daily active users.
The week after Elon Musk completed the acquisition of Twitter, Mullenweg said in November to The Atlantic that Tumblr iOS downloads had surged by 62%.
Tumblr increased its number of iOS and Android installs by 880,000 in November, up from 450,000 and 500,000 in September and October, respectively according to data from data.ai.
However, in the months that followed, its download numbers dropped back to normal levels, which is roughly 400,000 to 500,000 downloads per month.
CEO Matt Mullenweg and COO Zandy Ring answered queries from Tumblr fans regarding the company’s future in a live-streamed Q&A.
The “core product strategy” that Tumblr released on its staff blog the day prior to this Q&A session caught consumers off guard because it appears more like notes from an investor PowerPoint deck than a blog post.
“The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use,” the post reads.
This information is coming as Tumblr tries to “build in public” and be more open about the business that supports the fandom-focused platform.
