Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Tumblr's Unclear Future Shows That There's No Money in Internet Culture (nymag.com)

Posted by msmash on from the struggle-continues dept.

Earlier this month as Verizon completed its acquisition, a number of Tumblr employees, as well as those at other Verizon-owned properties, like the Huffington Post, were laid off. This comes at an interesting time for Tumblr, which is increasingly struggling to find a business model. From an article on NYMag: The future of Tumblr is still an open question. The site is enormously popular among the coveted youth crowd -- that's partly why then-CEO Marissa Mayer paid $1 billion for the property in 2013 -- but despite a user base near the size of Instagram's, Tumblr never quite figured out how to make money at the level Facebook has led managers and shareholders to expect. For a long time, its founder and CEO David Karp was publicly against the idea of inserting ads into users' timelines. (Other experiments in monetization, like premium options, never caught on: It's tough to generate revenue when your most active user base is too young to have a steady income.) Even once the timeline became open to advertising, it was tough to find clients willing to brave the sometimes-porny waters of the Tumblr Dashboard. Since it joined Yahoo, the site has started displaying low-quality "chum"-style ads in between user posts on the Dashboard. Looked at from a bottom-line perspective, Tumblr is an also-ran like its parent company -- a once-hot start-up that has eased into tech-industry irrelevance. [...] It is rare, but not at all unprecedented, for a site to reach Tumblr's size, prominence, and level of influence and still be unable to build a sustainable business. Twitter steers a huge portion of online culture, and has become an essential water cooler and newswire for journalists, tech workers, and otaku Nazis, but still has trouble turning a profit.

7 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. what TUMBLR really is.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    it's a huge depository of porn. Google site:tumblr.com followed by the most insane sexual practice you can think of and you will get hundreds of picture of said insane sexual practice.

    1. Re:what TUMBLR really is.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That just makes it worse. If the worst cesspool for porn cannot make money, then the internet has lost all hope. Now pass the tentacle links to help me through this difficult realization....

      Give me a fucking break. The largest cesspool of porn is the internet, and anyone should consider themselves lucky if they're still making money with online porn today.

      Kind of like social media, most consumers would be pissed if you asked them to pay for it.

    2. Re:what TUMBLR really is.... by TWX · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yet somehow porn continues to make money enough to afford to make actual productions with directors, producers, cameramen, makeup artists, and the renting of homes and other places to use as sets, in addition to paying the cast.

      It could well be that like a lot of other industries, as little as ten percent of the consumers of pornography drive ninety percent of the sales. This has been noted in other industries that have been argued as vices, like alcohol and tobacco, it's the alcoholics and chain-smokers that make the profits for the sellers, not the occasional drinkers or social smokers. It may well be that the vast majority of those that in some way use porn would not really ever pay anything substantial for it, but those few that would pay are willing to spend a lot of money for the productions that their favorite actresses or actors are cast-in, or for any ancillary products associated with those cast that are available for sale.

      Either way, just because you or I find it strange that someone would pay for such content, doesn't mean that everyone else feels the same way. Clearly that the market exists indicates otherwise.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    3. Re:what TUMBLR really is.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Sadly, not for long.

      All Tumblr "blogs" that have been marked as NSFW will be _inaccessible_ if you're not logged in to a Tumblr account.

      This shit will start on July fifth. (Happy Fourth, everybody!)

      Source: https://tumblr.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/231885248-Adult-content

      Quote:

      > * I marked my blog as explicit. What happens now?
      > ...
      > Also, starting on 7/5/17, anyone viewing your blog on the web will have to be logged in (with safe mode off) to see it.

  2. Puffs on unlit pipe, nods sagely by Hognoxious · · Score: 3, Funny

    No money in internet culture? There's not a great deal of culture in it either.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  3. Twitter *could* be profitable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Twitter steers a huge portion of online culture, and has become an essential water cooler and newswire for journalists, tech workers, and otaku Nazis, but still has trouble turning a profit.

    Because Twitter has too many employees! They have 3,860 employees. Are they working on a self-driving car or something? What in the fuck are all of those people producing?

  4. Re: They Said The Same About Facebook. by eaglesrule · · Score: 2

    I'd rather be called a sexist, racist asshole than someone who pretends facts don't matter. I might be a jerk, but at least I'm honest.

    Here on Slashdot, for that we have the -1 Troll mod.