Verizon sells Tumblr for a pittance of what it was once worth

In 2013, Yahoo snapped up free blogging platform Tumblr for $1.1 billion. Now it’s worth less than 2% of that sum, with Automattic, the parent of blogging giant WordPress, buying the site for “well below” $20 million, per a report by Axios. Automattic confirmed the details to Fast Company, and Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg wrote about the acquisition on—where else?—his Tumblr.

Tumblr’s fortunes declined with Yahoo’s, which sold for a fraction of its erstwhile value to Verizon in 2017. Under Verizon, Tumblr’s introduction of an NSFW content ban in late 2018 was followed by an exodus of kinky blogs, and a roughly one-third traffic drop by April 2019. Automattic also forbids porn on sites it hosts. But Tumblr may have better prospects with an owner who actually wants it, rather than a conglomerate that got stuck with it.