Every once in a while, we need to shine the spotlight on some industry news and this is especially the case if it affects some of the tools that we employ here on “The Chronicles” and of course on PiercingMetal.com – Recently, the folks at Automattic announced their purchase of the Tumblr medium. As you know, Automattic is also the owner of WordPress which we use for both of our websites. Read on down below for their owners statement on this news.

Automattic + Tumblr:
Those of you who’ve followed my Tumblr over the years have probably come to expect a mix of travel photos and the occasional link to my WordPress blog. Well, today is different. I’m delighted to share that Automattic is acquiring Tumblr.

Back in 2013, I reflected on how friendly the relationship has always been between WordPress.com and Tumblr, and on the exciting future I saw for web-publishing platforms like ours. In the intervening years, the Tumblr team has continued to impress me with their ability to create an intuitive publishing experience on desktop and on mobile, and to foster so many thriving, passionate communities. I have worked on WordPress my entire adult life — 16 years now — and so the democratization of publishing is near and dear to my heart. Tumblr and WordPress have always been very philosophically aligned there.

When the possibility to join forces became concrete, it felt like a once-in-a-generation opportunity to have two beloved platforms work alongside each other to build a better, more open, more inclusive – and, frankly, more fun web. I knew we had to do it.

Our teams are hard at work right now to make this transition smooth for everyone at Tumblr, and while we have many details to iron out, one thing we’re absolutely committed to is to preserve the passion and sense of community that so many people around the world – and all over the web – have come to associate with Tumblr.

In the underlying technology of our platforms, I think there are some good opportunities to standardize on the Open Source WordPress tech stack, but the front-end user experience on Tumblr will evolve on its own path. It has been so successful already, and we want to keep that going. The Tumblr team also has some exciting functionality they’re eager to unlock once we close the acquisition officially in a few weeks…

I look forward to working with everyone from Tumblr as we welcome them to Automattic, and I can’t wait for us to build great products together.

In the meantime, I now need to dig through my closet to find a certain old t-shirt, last seen around 2010…

*** end of statement ***

Piercing Ken Thoughts: This is interesting news for sure and some of you might recall my mentioning that the Tumblr cleaning of all the adult-related content (most of the super explicit stuff) was to make it more appealing to a potential buyer. I discussed that happening HERE if you have some interest in the research. I’ve had a PiercingMetal Tumblr for about 10 years and its been used to serve up that websites content and occasionally share the larger items that I post here on “The Chronicles” as a feed to each of the outlets. Part of me wonders if they will eventually subsume all of the Tumblr accounts and make them into WordPress ones and if that gets announced I will need to be creative since there already is a PiercingMetal WordPress profile. I’ll worry about that when the time comes but otherwise I feel a bit more interested in keeping this feed alive since it will likely find some better and smoother tools being implemented than it had before. One thing I would like is statistics and maybe a little more security and means of being broadcast. Our link is down below for any of those who are already using Tumblr so they can come and follow along. I will keep the information flowing and as I close this news item up I wonder what you think about the news. Chime in down below. See you next time.

Update 10/1/2020: Since the time of this announcement, the PiercingMetal Tumblr has been rebranded as the Ken Pierce Media Tumblr and all links now reflect this change. This rebranding makes it all the more comprehensive and entertaining going forward.

Official Website: http://www.tumblr.com
Official Website: http://www.automattic.com
Official PiercingMetal Ken Pierce Media Tumblr: http://www.kenpiercemedia.tumblr.com