Wow, they cleaned out a sizeable chunk of users. Keep it up, Tumblr!
Last December, Tumblr announced a ban on all porn on their platform. Pretty much everyone told them it was a bad idea, but they did it anyway. And now look at them: they’ve managed to cut their userbase by nearly a third.
According to SimilarWeb, a market intelligence firm, they’ve been bleeding visitors since the ban. They started at 520 million visits in December, to 439 in January, and wound up at 369 (lol) in February. That’s right, over the course of about 3 months, they lost over 150 million visits.
Previously, Tumblr allowed pornographic content on the platform. That changed when their app was pulled from the Apple App Store after child pornography was found on the site. Hence, the hyper-reactive ban on all pornographic content. And, despite the pleas of those engaged in such work stating that it was a lifeline for them, Tumblr banned it mid December, forcing said people to search for other crappy social media/blogging platforms.
That’s not to say their efforts to ban pornographic materials were perfect. Far from it, in fact; their algorithm was not exactly great at figuring out what was porn or not. So a number of innocent blogs, like those about dogs, or superheroes wound up accidentally getting banned. Even picture of our lord and savior Jesus Christ were picked out as porn by the damned thing.
A spokesperson responding to questions about the overall traffic drop had this to say:
We made a strategic decision for the business that better positions it for long-term growth among more types of users. This was the right decision.
I’m sure, Tumblr. I’m sure.
Source: PC Mag
About Author
