While the reaction to Yahoo purchasing Tumblr has been largely positive from both investors of Yahoo and users of the Tumblr blogging platform, it seems like not everyone was happy with the move. WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg reported that on the Sunday when the purchase was (unofficially) announced they saw a huge spike in the number of blogs which were imported to WordPress from Tumblr.
Mullenweg said on an average Sunday there are between 400 and 600 imports from Tumblr to WordPress. On May 19th, however, there were about 72,000 total imports in just one hour! With many millions of blogs hosted on Tumblr that is still a fairly small percentage of the total user base, but it really can’t be ignored. The question which is undoubtedly on the minds of many people, especially those with Tumblr and Yahoo is why did they leave.
Most people agree that Yahoo has been doing a good job for the past several months. The inescapable truth, however, is it is impossible to predict what types of changes will be made to the blogging platform now that it is under the Yahoo umbrella. Many people don’t like the unknown which may be why they moved to the more predictable (and popular) WordPress platform.
There were no details released about whether or not there was anything the bloggers who moved had in common, but it was most likely a mixture of just about all types of sites. Even Mullenweg said that he doesn’t think people are leaving Tumblr because of any major issue they have with the platform or even Yahoo. Many of these people may have been thinking about moving for some time and Yahoo’s purchase was just the trigger that caused them to take action.
From a marketing point of view the main concern, I believe, will be whether or not this turns into a trend and people continue moving away from Tumblr. WordPress is already the dominant blogging platform and if Tumblr drops significantly in popularity it could result in very little real competition in this area. Competition is always a good driver of innovation which is why I’d hate to see Tumblr drop into obscurity. Personally I think this will be a short term issue for Tumblr and Yahoo will do a great job improving the platform which will make it even more popular it the future.
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