Tumblr’s users and creators have been caught in the middle of a series of corporate decisions that have left them out in the cold. Finally, after a decade online, it seems the quirky social network won’t be left to its own devices, and it will have to find its own way forward. The other question, however, remains: is this the end of an era, or the end of Tumblr itself?

I can’t defend Tumblr if they are allowing people to break the law. Now that I’ve said that, I am concerned that this is the end of Tumblr. Back in the day I felt it was an amazing view of the future — easy republishing of content from all sorts of sources, one button sharing of content, and all of it wrapped in a bizarre social network. In so many ways it was the anti-facebook. You got a blog and a network to browse, follow, and repost. Comments were less important as getting reposted. To this day I don’t know of a platform that is as interesting as Tumblr.

I remember seeing the founder of Tumblr speak at SXSW and listening to his vision for Tumblr. And then Yahoo bought it … I sort of felt it was over then, but I kept publishing on my personal Tumblr because it was so easy and it connected with people.

Honestly this makes me very afraid of what comes next for Flickr. Perhaps it is time to move a bunch of content to yet another service … again.