That wasn’t a fork though. Qwikster was Netflix separating itself into two distinct businesses with very different offerings (movies by mail vs streaming).
Reminds me of Yik Yak a bit, the user count dropped like the Titanic because they attempted to pivot away from the main reason people were using the platform to begin with (in this case anonymous posts).
Not only did Tumblr activity collapse after the NSFW ban, but in the subjects I follow, activity seems to have settled on a niche of transwomen blogging about hobby or interest X, where their posts are mainly about being a transwoman interested in such things and not the hobby or interest itself. I understand that Tumblr has value for those transwomen wanting to express themselves and build community with others, but it has become a network relevant to only a tiny, tiny percentage of the population.
No, it’s just that intellectual subjects on Tumblr always attracted a certain share of neuroatypical people, and once the majority of users left Tumblr, only the neuroatypical remained.
Tumblr has plenty of discussion about hobbies, TV shows, anime, video games, etc. If you like a certain thing, tumblr is a great way to be exposed to people discussing it, making text jokes about it, making fanart about it, etc. That has been literally unaffected by the NSFW ban in the many fandoms I follow on it.
There are people like you describe, but it doesn't dominate the platform imo. It's easy enough to get a lot out of tumblr.
If that means all the weirdos with genitalia in their profile pics are gone and stop messaging me randomly (which is who actually left as far as I can tell), then good!
The remaining MAU might actually be the users they wanted to keep.
But as someone who never used tumblr for porn, I've seen no evidence that tumblr is dying for anyone other than aficionados of porn.
Did you even look at your link? Almost all the bar graphs suggest tumblr is doing great. If doing as good as Facebook is your bar for success, then you've just defined almost all businesses as failures. Those numbers beat owning a restaurant, and every startup I've ever worked at (which are all profitable).
So anyways, the tumblr that's basically the same as it was 10 years ago (unless you used it for porn), that's also still growing, is dying according to you, but not the numbers. Interesting. This is kind of like reading about your own death in the newspaper.
Who cares how it's doing financially? I'm not an investor. If the VCs who gave them money are never made whole, I do not care.
If their loss results in decades of free tumblr for me, all the better! I really doubt the site is gonna disappear tomorrow. And every indication so far is they aren't going to ruin it in the name of monetization.
You’re forgetting that those metrics are hugely important to tumblr because those metrics are hugely important to tumblr’s customers: advertisers. The reason they claim the policy change was necessary in the first place.
I don’t know what you mean by “business boy hat” - could this be a typo?
well they had the indirect effect of making the product better for their (unpaying) users.
When it comes to tumblr, I quite frankly don't give 2 shits about their advertisers. Why should I? Maybe the site will be shut down someday? You'd think that ship would've sailed.
I am talking from the perspective of a user. Those metrics have 0 impact on me as a user (outside of the company going under - or ruining itself in the name of more money.) There's no delusion here.
The users that remain on tumblr seem pretty happy about the effects of the nsfw ban. The people that left due to it weren't the good ones for the most part.
I don't think you understand how online businesses work. Social network companies like tumblr need advertiser dollars in order to pay for server and employee costs. Tumblr exists to generate revenue, user metrics mean revenue. If users aren't using the platform, advertisers stop paying as much and thus tumblr can't continue to exist.
Whether or not you like it now that porn is gone doesn't matter.
? why are you talking down to me? As if I don't know business 101? You sound like a wannabe VC.
Why do I need to align my values of good and bad with market forces? You literally cannot make an argument that your "objective" value system about business is the only True one.
I'd bet tumblr will continue to exist and I'd get to enjoy it for free (modulo ads) for at least another half decade if not more. And I bet throughout that time the company won't do much to monetize their users beyond what they already do. The userbase has long since proven it doesn't give tumblr money beyond a stray click. But it'll continue to plug along - "failing" the whole way.
There's as much or more tumblr activity for my dashboard & on my blog. I get way fewer porn spam bots following me now. And people generally seem to be happy with the website & are continuing to use it to talk about the stuff they like.
Pivoting away from the core reason you make money even if it's not the intended use case seems like a great way to cause the death of your company.