Verizon Media announced on August 12 (local time) that it would sell its microblogging service, Tumblr, to Automattic, a company well known for WordPress. Although detailed terms of the transaction were not disclosed, according to the foreign press, the acquisition price was much lower than $20 million.
Tumblr is a popular service that now hosts 475.1 million blogs. However, it is also true that recent growth has not been seen. In 2013, Yahoo bought Tumblr for $1.1 billion, but when it was acquired by Verizon in 2017, Tumblr became a Verizon affiliate. If the $20 million acquisition price is true, then Tumbler has dropped its value significantly over the past six years.
One of the things that influenced the downturn in Tumblr was the analysis that the policy change on the ban on adult content in late 2018 also worked. Previously, Tumblr was relatively tolerant of content, but a significant number of users fell away while banning it.
According to foreign media, Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automatic, also said he did not change the policy to ban adult content. In addition, 200 Tumbler employees will be inherited by Automatic. Mullenwarg said he is a long-time tumblr user and said that tumblr will complement WordPress.com and that he may not change anything on the existing tumblr. Looking at these remarks, just changing the parent company may not affect users for the time being. However, we can think of any movement to strengthen the linkage between WordPress.com and Tumblr someday. Related information can be found here .