You probably know of Tumblr. Tumblr is one of the most popular blogging social networks around. It was owned bought by Yahoo back in 2013 for $1.1 billion. It was then under Yahoo when Verizon bought Yahoo in June 2017. Well, now Tumblr is going to have a new parent and it is quite appropriate.
According to WSJ, Verizon has agreed to sell Tumblr to the owners of WordPress. Automattic Inc, the owners of WordPress, will acquire Tumblr for an undisclosed amount and take on around 200 staffers.
Verizon is selling this since they are revamping their media group, which has apparently struggled to meet revenue targets in recent years.
The acquisition by Automattic is the largest ever for the company and it joins the several brands in its flock, which includes the popular WordPress, Gravatar, Longreads and much more.
Automattic acquiring Tumblr makes a lot of sense. Tumblr is essentially a blogging platform like WordPress. You can have your own blog on Tumblr which you can customize to your liking. Tumblr blogs usually end up being very popular, especially when your content gets a lot of notes and it is a cool place to find a lot of interesting content.
Tumblr has been under fire the past year. Last year, Apple banned their app from the App store due to child pornography. This led to Tumblr deciding to ban porn on December 2018. Now Tumblr was known for its NSFW content and thanks to this ban, its traffic fell sharply by February this year.
We now wait to see how Tumblr will fair out under the new owners, who also own WordPress which we use here on Techweez.
