verizon sells tumblr to wordpress' parent company, automattic
Tumblr is being sold by Verizon to Automattic, the parent company of Wordpress. https://t.co/FF4zHF2fyW
- Twitter Moments (@TwitterMoments) August 12, 2019
- verizon is selling tumblr to automattic, the company behind the blogging tool wordpress. while the size of the deal has not been publicly announced it's estimated at less than $3 million.
- automattic ceo, matt mullenweg, sees tumblr as a companion to wordpress and "just fun."
- this is automattic's largest acquisition both in terms of cost and sheer staff count at 200 employees.
- yahoo bought the site in 2013 for $1.1 billion, but never really found a way to compete with the explosive growth of social networks like instagram. yahoo would eventually write off about $230 million of the site's value in 2016, and things didn't improve when verizon bought yahoo.
- its user base is still large with 475.1 million blogs, but lost a significant portion of its user base by doing a piss poor job of banning porn and other "adult content" which will not be reversed upon completion of the sale.
ontd, when was the last time you basked in some quality schadenfreude?
