The ‘Fediverse’ had a massive boom around 2023 with the popularity of Mastodon, and while it has lost some of that momentum, the open social network is still going strong. Tumblr has now confirmed again that it’s still working on interopability with Mastodon and other Fediverse platforms.
Popular blogging platform Tumblr still plans to hop on the Fediverse bandwagon, though the timeline is still unclear. This integration has been teased since 2022, but it’s been a long time since we’ve heard anything about it. Now, it looks like it’s about to happen. Once we have ActivityPub integration, Tumblr will be able to be interoperable with platforms such as Mastodon or Meta’s Threads, and it will likely be a massive boost for the fediverse.
When will this happen? We don’t have a precise date, but Automattic, the company that owns Tumblr (and also owns WordPress), has confirmed that this will come right after Tumblr is done migrating its backend to the WordPress infrastructure. The company says that this is actually critical for this integration. In case you missed it, Automattic announced last summer that it was moving its half a billion blogs to WordPress. This would make it easier for the company to develop tools, features, and open-source developments for both services.
The migration is currently in progress, but due to its scale, Automattic won’t really commit to a strict timeline. Once this migration is complete and the fediverse switch is flipped on, though, every Tumblr blog will have the option to federate via ActivityPub. This move opens up a world of possibilities for Tumblr users, letting them share their content and engage with a broader audience across the open social web.
We don’t know when this will happen, but it’s good to see that Tumblr hasn’t forgotten about this yet.
Source: TechCrunch
