Contrary to what many people may think, Tumblr didn’t go out of style. Several factors contributed to its push to obscurity, one of them being the $1.1 billion Yahoo! paid to acquire the microblogging platform.
An anonymous Tumblr executive spoke to Digiday in 2017, noting an apparent culture clash between the two internet giants.
“Yahoo never gave Tumblr the time and support to innovate ad products. By the time Yahoo realized how far in the race Tumblr fell behind, it was already too late,” the person stated.
Another unnamed employee claimed that most of Tumblr’s corporate staff refused to work for Yahoo out of concern of potentially losing their “great company culture.”
Tumblr eventually landed in the hands of Automatic, the web development company that created WordPress. The change of ownership happened in 2019, when Verizon sold it for a “paltry” $3 million.
According to recent statistics, Tumblr has around 135 million monthly active users globally. And surprisingly (or unsurprisingly) enough, data found that its core users are Gen Z, which makes up 95 million of its global monthly active users.
So, why is the “ancient” Tumblr such a hit among young people today? According to cultural critic and The New Yorker journalist Kyle Chayka, one reason is that the platform offers a welcome escape from influencer culture.
"There are no influencers on Tumblr in the contemporary sense—no one making a living off brand deals or optimizing their posts for an audience of millions,” Chayka wrote. “The site remains famously bad at monetization, which is precisely what makes it feel so human."
Another thing that sets Tumblr apart from popular social platforms is that it enables users to turn off its dashboard algorithm. This allows people to see posts in reverse chronological order, just like in the old days.
According to Chayka, this adds to its appeal, especially to younger people who don’t want all the noise that TikTok and Instagram bring.
"On TikTok or Instagram, content is pushed to you by black-box algorithms based on what will keep you staring at your screen the longest,” Chayka wrote. "The lack of a frictionless, highly engineered feedback loop makes Tumblr feel less like a competitive arena and more like a quiet room where you can just look at things you like."
