Despite delays, the plan to connect Tumblr's blogging site to the wider world of decentralized social media, also known as the "fediverse," is still on,
Despite delays, the plan to connect Tumblr’s blogging site to the wider world of decentralized social media, also known as the “fediverse,” is still on, it seems.
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, the protocol powering Twitter/X rival Mastodon and other decentralized social apps.
But it also led many fediverse advocates to wonder if Tumblr’s plans to join the world of decentralized social media had also been scrapped.
Reading between the lines, it seems the company isn’t ready to place a full bet on ActivityPub — though Mullenweg generally supports a more open internet.
Though Mastodon today only has around 1.5 million monthly active users, ActivityPub is seeing more momentum as of late — especially now that Instagram Threads, another Twitter/X competitor, is pledging integration with the fediverse.
In another AMA response, Mullunweg also noted that a larger effort to migrate Tumblr’s half a billion blogs to WordPress on the backend is something he’s also contemplating in the new year.
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