Automattic puts Tumblr migration to WordPress on hold

Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg confirmed that the company is no longer working on migrating its Tumblr blogging platform to WordPress, as previously announced. The exec shared the news on The Verge’s Decoder podcast, published on Monday, saying that the project is “on hold” for an indefinite period.

“What we decided is that we want to focus as much on the things that are going to be noticeable to users and that users are asking for,” he told the site. “This was more like an infrastructure thing, kind of like any big re-architecture. I still want to do it. It’s just cleaner. But right now, we’re not working on it.”

The announcement also raises questions about what this means for Tumblr’s integration with the open social web, known as the fediverse. By migrating its infrastructure to WordPress, it would have become a federated app. Mullenweg admits that was one of the arguments for making the move, but hints that it’s no longer a priority.

“…in the meantime, I think if there was a big push to implement fediverse, we would just do it on the Tumblr code base,” he said.

Mullenweg also reiterated that Tumblr is not profitable, and is sustained from the profits of other Automattic products. Still, he said he believed in Tumblr’s future and plans to give it the runway it needs to figure things out.