Tumblr
Microblogging and social networking website
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| January 2025 | Matt Mullenweg stated that the Tumblr backend migration would 'unlock' ActivityPub access, including native support for the company's official ActivityPub plugin for WordPress. |
| 2024 | Tumblr announced the discontinuation of Tumblr Live 24, with options for users to migrate to MeetMe. |
| August 2024 | Automattic announced the migration of Tumblr's backend to an architecture derived from WordPress to ease development and code sharing between platforms. |
| June 1 2024 | Tumblr scheduled to remove the user tipping feature due to low usage. |
| February 2024 | Automattic announced plans to sell user data from Tumblr and WordPress.com to Midjourney and OpenAI, with users automatically opted-in by default. |
| January 2024 | Tumblr removed Post+ due to low usage. |
| November 2023 | Most of Tumblr's product development and marketing teams were transferred to other groups within Automattic, with a shift in focus to core functionality and streamlining existing features. |
| October 10 2023 | Project Brazen published a story about Indian businessman Gaurav Srivastava, which was subsequently republished on Tumblr with a backdated timestamp. |
| October 8 2023 | A Tumblr account created a backdated post of the Project Brazen story, attempting to predate the original publication. |
| July 11 2023 | During an AMA, Tumblr's CEO revealed the company was losing $30 million annually. |
| December 2022 | Tumblr announced a livestreaming service called Tumblr Live, an adapted version of The Meet Group's Livebox. |
| November 2022 | Tumblr changed its rules to allow nudity, but continued to prohibit sexually explicit images. |
| November 2022 | Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg announced that Tumblr will add support for the decentralized social networking protocol ActivityPub. |
| February 2022 | Tumblr launched an ad-free subscription option priced at $5 per month or $40 per year. |
| February 2022 | Tumblr introduced a feature allowing users to tip small amounts of money to other users. |
| January 2022 | Tumblr reached a settlement with New York City's Commission on Human Rights regarding the disproportionate impact of the adult content ban on LGBTQ+ users. |
| September 22 2021 | Tumblr discontinued the group chat feature. |
| July 21 2021 | Tumblr launched Post+ for beta users, allowing bloggers to monetize their content. |
| May 2020 | Tumblr announced a policy to remove reblogs of terminated hate speech posts, specifically targeting Nazi and white supremacist content. |
| November 2019 | Tumblr introduced 'group chats', ephemeral chat rooms where posts would disappear after 24 hours. |
| August 12 2019 | Verizon Media announced the sale of Tumblr to Automattic for less than $3 million, marking a significant ownership transition for the platform. |
| May 2019 | Reports emerged that Verizon was considering selling Tumblr due to continued struggles, with Pornhub's vice president publicly expressing interest in purchasing the site. |
| March 2019 | SimilarWeb estimated Tumblr had lost 30% of its user traffic since the new content policy was implemented. |
| 2018 | Kotaku reporter Gita Jackson publicly criticized Tumblr, describing the platform as a 'joyless black hole' and highlighting how the site's design and community dynamics lead to toxic fandom behaviors and inhibit constructive discourse. |
| December 2018 | Tumblr's iOS app was restored to the App Store approximately one month after its initial removal. |
| December 3 2018 | Tumblr announced a complete ban on adult content, effective December 17, prohibiting images and videos depicting sex acts, human genitalia, and 'female-presenting' nipples. |
| November 2018 | Tumblr announced a platform-wide ban on explicit images of sex acts and nudity, with limited exceptions, and deployed an automatic content recognition system that inadvertently removed many non-pornographic images. |
| November 2018 | Apple removed Tumblr's iOS app from the App Store after discovering illegal child pornography on the service. |
| July 31 2018 | Go90 video network was shut down. |
| March 2018 | Tumblr began syndicating original video content from Verizon-owned go90 video network, making content available internationally. |
| February 2018 | BuzzFeed published a report exposing Tumblr's role as a distribution channel for Russian influencers targeting the 2016 US presidential election. |
| February 2018 | Safe Mode, which filters 'sensitive' content, became enabled by default for all users on an opt-out basis. |
| November 2017 | David Karp announced his departure from Tumblr, with Jeff D'Onofrio taking over as company leader. |
| June 2017 | Verizon Communications acquired Yahoo and placed Tumblr under its Oath subsidiary. |
| 2016 | Russian agents reportedly used Tumblr as a platform to influence American voting habits during the presidential election, as revealed in a BuzzFeed report published in February 2018. |
| 2016 | Yahoo wrote down $712 million of Tumblr's value due to unmet advertising sales goals. |
| July 2016 | Advertisements were implemented by default across all Tumblr blogs. |
| February 2016 | Indonesian government temporarily blocked Tumblr access due to pornographic content, but quickly reversed the decision and requested Tumblr to self-censor such content. |
| January 2016 | Law enforcement searched the Tumblr user's home related to the 'Boneghazi' incident, discovering 11 bones and four teeth. |
| 2015 | The 'Boneghazi' controversy erupted when a user from New Orleans allegedly collected human bones from Holt Cemetery, sharing details in the Queer Witch Collective Facebook group. |
| 2015 | Members of the Steven Universe fandom engaged in extreme cyberbullying against an artist, driving them to attempt suicide after the artist drew characters in a way that was perceived as misrepresenting body types from the show. |
| December 2015 | Tumblr added the ability to send posts to other users via the Dashboard, expanding the platform's messaging and sharing capabilities. |
| November 10 2015 | Tumblr introduced an integrated instant messaging function, initially rolled out to a limited group of 1,500 users. The messaging system was designed to be viral, with access spreading to other users through messages sent by those initially granted access. This new feature replaced the previous 'fan mail' system. |
| September 2015 | Tumblr changed the display of comment threads on reblogged posts from a nested view with indentations to a flat view, and added user avatars. This change was intended to improve legibility, especially on mobile platforms, but was widely criticized by users and media outlets like The Verge for losing the platform's 'nostalgic charm'. |
| July 2015 | Tumblr modified its reblog mechanisms, preventing users from removing or editing individual comments when reblogging a post. The platform argued this change was to combat 'misattribution', but it was criticized by 'ask blogs' and 'RP blogs' who used comment editing to improve readability. |
| 2014 | Tumblr's user activity peaked at over 100 million blog posts per quarter. |
| 2013 | Tumblr began allowing companies to pay to promote their posts to a larger audience. |
| July 2013 | Tumblr began filtering adult-tagged blogs from search results and tagged displays, requiring users to be logged in to view such content. |
| June 20 2013 | The Tumblr acquisition by Yahoo was finalized, with David Karp remaining as CEO despite user backlash. |
| May 20 2013 | TechCrunch analysis revealed that over 22% of Tumblr's traffic was pornographic content, with 16.45% of blogs exclusively containing pornographic material. |
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This contents of the box above is based on material from the Wikipedia article Tumblr, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.