Wordpress owner acquires Tumblr at knockdown price from Verizon
Tumblr is set to be sold off for a knockdown price after owners Verizon opted to dispose of the social network to Wordpress owner Automattic for a reported fee of less than $3m.
Wordpress acquires Tumblr from Verizon in fire sale
The deal marks a dramatic change of fortunes for Tumblr, which was bought by Yahoo for $1.1bn in 2013, and then assimilated into the Verizon fold when the telecoms giant bought Yahoo in 2017.
The short-form blogging platform is said to have lost almost a third of its traffic since banning all pornography and sexually explicit content in 2018.
Tumblr itself remains unprofitable despite hosting over 450 million blogs but Automattic has pledged to maintain the porn ban as well as take on all 200 employees.
The change in ownership follows the departure of founder and chief executive David Karp in 2017