Notestonate

Cloud computing and software as a service are a choice. "Local first" computing is possible, and desirable.

By Sandu

Prompt:

https://www.theverge.com/23506085/wordpress-twitter-tumblr-ceo-matt-mullenweg-elon-musk

(…)

But let’s start at the beginning. Why did you buy Tumblr?

Tumblr was always WordPress’s best competitor. I feel like Tumblr combined the very best parts of blogging and social networks, and it innovated the form of social media by introducing multimodal posts. One, I was excited to bring some of the fun back to blogging, because I think that everyone should blog more.

Yes, I agree.

Two, I wanted to see if we could create a mainstream social media that wasn’t reliant on surveillance capitalism or advertising as its primary business model. We run ads on Tumblr, but we also have upgrades that turn off ads, and we’re introducing lots of other subscriptions — some fun, some serious. If we can make it a subscriber-supported thing, then we can truly be aligned. Even if I were no longer running Automattic or Tumblr, the business model would align the users with its business.

Finally, I felt like we need a space on the internet for creativity, art, and artists. The other social spaces on the internet have gone different directions. Twitter became a lot more about arguing, Instagram became about showing off, and Facebook became about weird people you went to school with saying weird things. Tumblr always had this frisson, this magic. Instead of an angry mob, it’s more like comedy improv. There’s a “Yes, and…” to it.

Tumblr is a collaborative group art project at scale, for sure.

  Candles   -    Sasha Hartslief

South African ,  b.1974-