Verizon

Verizon announces sale of Tumblr to Automattic, the owner of WordPress

by Cosmin Vasile / Aug 12, 2019, 7:33 PM

Verizon announces sale of Tumblr to Automattic, the owner of WordPress

Six years after Yahoo bought Tumblr for $1.1 billion, Verizon decided that it's time to part ways with the social network. The buyer, Automattic, the parent company of WordPress, confirmed plans to acquire Tumblr earlier today.

Unfortunately, terms of the deal haven't been disclosed yet, so we have no idea how much Automattic will pay for the acquisition, nor when the deal will close. In a joint statement by Verizon and Automattic, the companies seem to be happy and excited to be able to close such a deal.

Automattic's CEO, Matt Mullenweg said that while Tumblr “is one of the Web's most iconic brands,” his company is excited to add it to its portfolio, which, in case you didn't know, already includes WordPress, WooCommerce, Jetpack, Simplenote, Longreads, and more.

On the other hand, Verizon considers the move “the culmination of a thoughtful, thorough and strategic process.” Verizon Media CE Guru Gowrappan says his company is proud of what the team at Tumblr has accomplished until now and that it's happy to have found someone like Automattic to buy it.

Around 200 Tumblr employees, along with the company's technologies, will be acquired by Automattic for an undisclosed amount as part of the deal. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions.

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4 Comments

1. AlienKiss

Posts: 260; Member since: May 21, 2019

Tumblr still has a lot of users because it doesn't delete porn photos or videos. Hell, this is the only reason I have an account there also. If they take that away, everyone's gonna flee in 2 minutes. People need porn too, not only silly selfies of chicks with extra fat duck lips like Instagram. Bleah! I'm never going to make an account there.

posted on Aug 13, 2019, 3:20 AM 2

2. Rampage_Taco

Posts: 1109; Member since: Jan 17, 2017

Didn't Tumblr kill it's porn back in November/December after child porn was found on the site?

posted on Aug 13, 2019, 9:00 AM 3

3. thedizzle

Posts: 202; Member since: Oct 05, 2017

^ Yeah I also thought this was the case

posted on Aug 13, 2019, 11:28 AM 2

4. shonasof

Posts: 36; Member since: Mar 18, 2019

They did. And they use algorithms to detect any potentially 'bad' posts, which seem to catch a lot of common posts as well. There was a while where a friend of mine couldn't post any pictures f her dog playing in the yard because they were auto flagged as being explicit. *bangs head on wall* Hopefully the new owners will actually manage the issues rather than offering nothing but knee-jerk reactionary BS.