Tumblr loses $30 million a year

Elon Musk knows it only too well after his time at the head of Twitter: it is difficult to make a social network profitable, all the more so if we add to it an erratic management of the company’s financial and human resources. Tumblr is no exception to these extreme difficulties: in a live stream Q&A, CEO of Tumblr Matt Mullenweg as well as the COO Zandy Ring Fielded kindly answered a few questions concerning the management of the company.

This interview without filter gives birth to a first revelation: Tumblr loses about 30 million dollars a year! These aren’t huge losses, but it still means the social network isn’t breaking even. “People have this impression that we have massive growth right now, and that’s really not the case” admits Zandy Ring Fielded. Tumblr is in fact struggling to increase its active user base, mainly since the ban on NSFW content (mainly pornography) in 2019.

Besides the issue of “adult” content, Tumblr executives believe they know what’s wrong: “The underlying problem is that Tumblr isn’t easy to use” reads the “core product strategy” document published a few hours ago on the Tumblr blog page. The other big concern is the huge gap between the very chaotic (even libertarian) culture of “historic” Tumblr users and the much more polished (and profitable) rules that the new leaders want to put in place. The solution will probably not be easy to find…