Automattic, the company behind WordPress and Tumblr’s owner, said it is moving the microblogging platform over to WordPress.

Verizon Media sold Tumblr to Automattic in 2019, with Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg describing the microblogging platform as “on-ramp” to his company’s other products.

“I’m excited about that on-ramp as well as to bring a younger demographic and young people into WordPress,” Mullenweg said in 2023.

After owning the platform for several years, Automattic is moving it over to WordPress in an effort to improve sharing across platforms. The company emphasizes that Tumblr is not inherently changing, and most users won’t even notice a difference.

We’re not talking about changing Tumblr. We’re not turning Tumblr into WordPress. That would defeat the purpose. We acquired Tumblr to benefit from its differences and strengths, not to water it down. We love Tumblr’s streamlined posting experience and its current product direction. We’re not changing that. We’re talking about running Tumblr’s backend on WordPress. You won’t even notice a difference from the outside.

The change will make it easier for creators to share content across the two platforms with minimal effort.

Running Tumblr on WordPress will make it easier to share our work across platforms. We can build something once and bring it to both WordPress and Tumblr. We can run Tumblr on the rock-solid infrastructure behind WordPress.com. Tumblr will benefit from the collective effort that goes into the open source WordPress project. And WordPress will benefit from the tools and creativity we invest into Tumblr and contribute back to WordPress.

The company says the migration will be one of the biggest technical migrations in history, but believes the benefits are worth it.

This won’t be easy. Tumblr hosts over half a billion blogs. We’re talking about one of the largest technical migrations in internet history. Some people think it’s impossible. But we say, “challenge accepted.”

Automattic has developed a reputation for buying up smaller projects that align well with its own ecosystem, and continuing to invest in and evolve those products in a way that benefits users. It appears Tumblr is no exception.