Tumblr Details Big Plans To Draw In New Users

As the social media landscape dramatically shifts in the wake of Meta's recent launch of Threads, a familiar network is looking to become a major player again: Tumblr. The microblogging platform has been around since 2007 but has waxed and waned in popularity over the years, including during a five-year period when it was owned by Yahoo! Inc. Verizon bought Yahoo during that time and eventually sold Tumblr to WordPress operator Automattic, which currently owns the platform. Automattic is hoping to bring in more users to Tumblr, both old and new, by making sweeping core changes to the social network, and outlined its new mission statement in a lengthy post on the Tumblr staff blog.

At the heart of the proposed changes is a retooling of the user interface to make Tumblr simpler and more inviting to users who are accustomed to streamlined platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and now, Threads. In the blog post titled "Tumblr's Core Product Strategy," the company identifies its main concern: "Tumblr is not easy to use." The company follows that admission with its proposed solution: "attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform."

Aware that it still has a dedicated following who don't mind the way Tumblr currently operates, the company argues that newer users brought in by the changes will ensure that current users won't lose Tumblr altogether. "A larger user base means a more sustainable company," the staff writes very early in the statement, "and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer." The post then delves into six core principles that will guide Tumblr's upcoming plans.

The company outlines each principle guiding its efforts "to enhance Tumblr's usability," as well as listing possible actions and next steps to address each principle. As listed in the blog post, these guiding principles include things like "Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr" and "Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr." Some obvious plans included in the more detailed breakdowns of these principles include backend efforts to increase SEO, improve app performance and stability, and strengthen the algorithms that present content to each user. 

Tumblr also plans to look into its logged-out experience in order to attract users who aren't signed in or have accounts, which Elon Musk recently discovered is important for a social media network. Another big change, based on the third principle, will be to the ways users can reply and reblog posts, facilitating conversation by streamlining how users engage with posts. 

The company likewise says it will work on finding the right amount of daily push notifications that can bring users to the app — without turning them away with too many. The platform also looks to boost its creator base with incentives for creating strong content and posting more often, as well as by allowing Tumblr links to be embedded into posts and other new ways to co-create content. While Threads is making headlines for attracting 100 million users in just its first week, Tumblr is gambling that these new changes will prove there's still room in the social media landscape for its down-but-not-out platform.