On March 23rd, 2017, Tumblr announced the release of their new timeline view, which was intended to be their first step in transitioning from a social media company to one that focused on better native ad and video. The announcement was met with mixed reactions by the public and even more so the competitors who had been using Tumblr’s past self-promotion as a marketing strategy. A lot has changed since then.
More than five months later, in November of 2017, it became clear that this new ‘business model’ was not going to work for Tumblr because it did not generate enough revenue for them to make up for their losses from posting ads. The company has been struggling ever since. In February of 2018, the company announced it was laying off 30 employees, and in March the company announced it was closing its offices in London and San Francisco.
The fact that Tumblr could not even make any money from their new timeline view shows how much of a failure it has been. However, rather than trying to adapt to the situation and focusing on improving things for users, Tumblr chose to double down on their failed strategy by releasing new updates focused on making Tumblr more like Instagram.
Tumblr’s update did nothing but annoy users as they tried to become like Instagram. The new update split the feed into 4 columns and reduced it to only showing 9 posts. If a person had a following of more than one person, they would only be able to see one post from each. This update did nothing but annoy users while also reducing the value that they were providing to advertisers.
Tumblr’s strategy was based on the idea that there was still money in native ads, and they were hoping to remain relevant by offering a better user experience while generating more revenue for themselves. This type of thinking is not sustainable in a long term business plan because at some point someone else is going to copy your idea, and you will be left standing with nothing. That is exactly what happened to Snapchat when Instagram launched their version of a photo-sharing app.
Tumblr is struggling because they are trying to create a new product without understanding the market that they have been operating in for the past few years. They abandoned the platform in order to appease marketers who wanted them to follow suit with other social media sites, and now they are failing at adapting from what worked for them in the past. Tumblr’s only viable business model is shitposting, and if the company wants to stay relevant it will have to focus on improving their current model before attempting anything else.
| Homepage | Click Hear |
