Blogger Claims, “Tumblr Stole My Domain at the Behest of a Corporation” (aka Pitchkfork Media)

Pitchfork Media’s President/Founder Ryan Schreiber
…laughing at the level of his own influence perhaps

In what may prove to be one of the douchiest public relation moves ever made by two self-important websites comes news that Pitchfork Media and Tumblr stole the subdomain of a Tumblr blogger, which had been established more than a year ago.

From HIPSTERRUNOFF.com:
“Pitchfork Media.com, the world’s largest music reviews site started a Tumblr version of their blog. Tumblr is a micro-blogging community which has a loyal, growing user base, filling a niche somewhere between livejournal and twitter. Websites often start tumblr version of their websites in order to reach content creators who are looking to share their high level content on a daily basis. This was probably a ‘good idea’ to reach out to the tumblr community, but the acquisition of their URL has started a ‘huge’ backlash by tumblr and pitchfork fans + users.

“The URL pitchfork.tumblr.com had been squatted upon by the tumblogger Tumbledore. Unfortunately, he woke up one morning to see that his tumblr URL had been taken from him and given to pitchfork. At this point, we can only speculate that Pitchfork purchased the URL from tumblr. Other conspiracy theories say Tumblr and Pitchfork were looking to combine their user bases in order to get a lethal amount of mad internet page views.

“From Tumbledore’s rant against the Tumblr corporation:

‘Recently, one of my friends who is subscribed to my pitchfork tumblr was surprised to see a sudden change in the content I was posting. That’s because Tumblr stole my subdomain and gave (sold?) it to Pitchfork Media Inc. Keep in mind that the word “pitchfork” is not a proprietary name, it is a noun dating back to the year 1364, so they had no legal right to the word or the subdomain. It clearly wasn’t a case of impersonation as none of my posts had anything to do with music. If there was some kind of content quality threshold that failed to be met which led to my blog’s demise, then 98% of Tumblr should now be blank. Is it possible there’s a certain amount of time that can pass between posts before Tumblr deletes your blog? If so, they should probably make that information public just in case someone accidentally makes the mistake of going on vacation.’”

Read Tumbledore’s account of what happened here
Read Hipster Runoff’s article in full here
Read Pitchfork President Ryan Scriberer’s defense here
Read Tumblr’s defense here

For even more Pitchfork drama read The Daily Swarm’s article about the site here

posted by: Harold Johns III