All articles tagged with #tumblr
Originally Published 6 months ago — by The Verge
Automattic has put its plan to migrate Tumblr's backend to WordPress on hold to focus on user-visible features, delaying the integration with the fediverse and the potential for Tumblr posts to be shared across platforms, though the idea remains under consideration for the future.
Originally Published 1 year ago — by Vox.com
Companies like OpenAI and Midjourney are using scraped public data, including content from platforms like Tumblr and Reddit, to train AI systems. The New York Times is suing OpenAI for allegedly using its archives without permission, while Getty Images has sued Stable Diffusion for copyright infringement. Some companies, like the Associated Press and Shutterstock, have made deals to license their archives for AI training. Reddit has sold access to its posts to Google, and Automattic, the parent company for Tumblr and WordPress, is reportedly preparing to announce deals selling user data to AI companies. The use of public data to train AI models raises concerns about data privacy and the impact on creators whose work is being used without their permission.
Originally Published 1 year ago — by Gizmodo
Automattic, the parent company of WordPress and Tumblr, is in talks to sell user-generated content to AI companies for training purposes, sparking controversy internally. Some of the scraped content reportedly included private and advertising content not owned by Automattic. The company plans to introduce a new setting to allow users to opt out of having their content used for AI training, but it's unclear if this setting will be toggled on or off by default. Automattic defended the move as an opportunity to give users more control over their content, stating that they are following best practices in the industry and will respect all opt-out settings.
Originally Published 1 year ago — by The Verge
Automattic, the owner of Tumblr and WordPress.com, is reportedly in talks with AI companies Midjourney and OpenAI to provide training data scraped from users' posts, potentially creating a new revenue stream for the site. The company plans to launch a new setting allowing users to opt out of data sharing with third parties, including AI companies. However, it's unclear what data has been sent to the AI companies and how it has been used. This move reflects a trend of companies striking deals with AI tool makers for training data, but it has also sparked concerns from the creative community about their work being used for training. Automattic has struggled to monetize Tumblr since acquiring it in 2019 and is seeking new avenues for revenue.
Originally Published 2 years ago — by PCMag
According to a survey by Reviews.org, Facebook is the most addictive social media platform, followed by TikTok and YouTube. However, TikTok and Tumblr users spend the most time engaging with the platforms, averaging 2 hours and 44 minutes and 2 hours and 41 minutes per day, respectively. Facebook ranks fourth in terms of engagement, with users spending just over 2 hours per day. Meta's Threads, a Twitter rival, has lower usage across all generations but dedicated users spend an average of 1 hour and 56 minutes per day on the platform. The survey also found that a quarter of respondents check social media out of fear of missing out (FOMO), while half believe it has negative effects but also contributes positively to their social lives and relationships.
Originally Published 2 years ago — by TechCrunch
Tumblr is rolling out a new web interface that resembles X (formerly Twitter), with a left-side navigation bar and a bottom-left compose button. The change aims to make it easier for users to explore and understand the platform. Tumblr has incorporated user feedback during the testing phase and made tweaks to the new look. The company is also considering a collapsible navigation version and improving screen space utilization. After Elon Musk took over Twitter, Tumblr saw an increase in new users seeking an alternative. However, some Tumblr users are unhappy with the changes and have expressed their displeasure on X. Tumblr has been spending more than it earns annually and has struggled to grow its daily active users since the porn ban.
Originally Published 2 years ago — by CNN
DashCon, a failed Tumblr convention in 2014, taught us a valuable lesson about the difficulty of translating the social media experience into the real world. Despite its mismanagement and low attendance, it became an enduring emblem of internet culture, with the ball pit of dissociation as its enduring symbol. The convention's founder, Lochlan O'Neil, learned how big of a gap there is between a dream and a functioning reality, but also made lasting friendships and connections through the event.
Originally Published 2 years ago — by Deadline
Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer regrets buying Tumblr for $1.1B in 2013 and believes that buying Netflix or Hulu instead would have been a better acquisition. Yahoo wrote down Tumblr's value by $230 million in 2016 and sold it for far less than it had paid for it after Verizon acquired Yahoo. Mayer also regrets hiring Henrique de Castro as the COO instead of Lisa Utzschneider and not making the tax-free Alibaba spinoff to separate the assets of the company.
Originally Published 2 years ago — by Yahoo Finance
Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has admitted that buying Netflix for $4 billion would have been a better "transformative acquisition" than Tumblr, which Yahoo acquired for $1.1 billion in 2013. Mayer said that Yahoo had also considered buying Hulu for $1.3 billion at the time. Mayer also expressed regret for hiring the wrong person as her chief operating officer and not doing the tax-free Alibaba spinoff, which would have saved $10 billion for shareholders.
Originally Published 2 years ago — by Fortune
Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has admitted that buying Netflix for $4 billion would have been a better acquisition than Tumblr, which Yahoo bought for $1.1 billion in 2013. Mayer also expressed regret over hiring the wrong person as her COO and not doing the tax-free Alibaba spinoff. Yahoo wrote down Tumblr's value by over $700 million by 2016. Mayer is now the CEO and co-founder of Sunshine, a startup offering an app that uses AI to organize contacts on smartphones.
Originally Published 2 years ago — by Variety
Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has said that the company should have acquired Netflix or Hulu instead of Tumblr in 2013. Yahoo bought Tumblr for $1.1bn, but struggled to monetize its user base and took a $230m goodwill-impairment charge in 2015. Meanwhile, Yahoo's own streaming-video play failed to gain traction and the company shut down Yahoo Screen in 2016. Verizon bought Yahoo in 2017 for $4.5bn, and sold Tumblr to Automattic for $3m in 2019.
Originally Published 2 years ago — by The Verge
Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said in an interview that the company should have bought Netflix or Hulu instead of Tumblr. Yahoo paid $1.1 billion for Tumblr in 2013 but struggled to make sense of the platform among its other media efforts. Mayer said that either Netflix or Hulu would have been a better acquisition. Verizon acquired Yahoo and Tumblr, but after the prevalence of child porn on the platform, Tumblr was offloaded to the owner of WordPress for less than $3 million.
Originally Published 2 years ago — by The Verge
Mastodon's hashtag search system is difficult to navigate due to the platform's design, which disallows plaintext search. Hashtags clutter up posts, consume valuable character count, and can pose serious annoyances for accessibility tools like screen readers. A Tumblr-style system of listing tags separately from the content of the post, with a separate character limit for the tags, has been suggested as a potential solution. This could improve the user experience for everybody and make the platform more navigable.
Originally Published 2 years ago — by The Verge
Tumblr users have turned the site's poll feature into a game design tool, creating sometimes complex and often funny challenges for readers. Some games require achieving a final vote breakdown that's perfectly balanced to defeat an evil robot sorcerer, while others need you to ensure the votes match specific percentages to successfully assassinate Julius Caesar. The games rely on the information gap created by the poll system, leaving them vulnerable to sabotage, but participants seem largely unbothered by losing. The trend highlights how people are collectively finding new ways to enjoy social media features.