
Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic - minimaxir
https://www.wsj.com/articles/verizon-to-sell-tumblr-to-wordpress-owner-11565640000?mod=rsswn
======
photomatt
I'm super excited to have the Tumblr team and product join the Automattic
family. We've been evolving Automattic to be more of a Berkshire Hathaway-
inspired model and businesses with a lot of autonomy, and this continues that
trend.

I was very impressed with the engagement and activity Tumblr has continued to
have, and I hope that with this new ownership and investment the product will
blossom.

~~~
evanelias
According to this article [1], you plan to move Tumblr's backend onto
WordPress. Considering that Tumblr's infra stores over 1 trillion distinct
product objects, this would be one of the most technically ambitious
migrations in history. Can you share any thoughts of how it will be
approached? Will you be pruning/purging old content or inactive users?

[1] [https://poststatus.com/automattic-has-purchased-
tumblr/](https://poststatus.com/automattic-has-purchased-tumblr/)

~~~
photomatt
That's an excellent question! I don't want to be so presumptuous as to define
an exact approach before the technical exploration has started, besides saying
it'll be done incrementally and in an easily revertable way to be invisible to
users, just like the big datacenter migration Automattic just completed a few
weeks ago.

At the point when we start this the Tumblr team will have been part of
Automattic for the better part of a year if not more, so there will be a lot
of learning and evolution of the products on both sides to make any migration
easier.

I promise we'll write about it afterward for anyone who is curious.

~~~
kill_nate_kill
You should almost make it a documentary.

~~~
duncanawoods
Yes! I’d pay more for real world business documentaries than anything on
netflix.

~~~
echelon
Please actually do this.

Find a way to get Verizon to sign off on this, and then get in touch with an
established documentary maker. Pair them with an engineer and follow the story
of the migration efforts. It will take time, and it'll certainly have a
narrative.

Nothing like this has been done before. I struggle with making what I do
relatable to people, but having a technical or semi-technical documentary
following this large project would be eye-opening.

We'll even crowd fund this if you give us the chance. I'm not kidding.

Please, please, please make this migration a documentary film.

~~~
artpi
From the documentaries I've seen, its lots of people walking to a meeting,
meetings themselves, etc. For that kind of documentary, probably people
walking into servers rooms, or having heated discussions.

In Automattic, we basically evolved to remove all that :) There would be
basically zoom calls and slack discussions. The most ambitious project I
worked on in Automattic were just me, looking at the code and trying to
understand why something is happening. Or looking up Stripe documentation.

We get to sit in front of our laptops in nice places though :)

~~~
echelon
We don't need server rooms.

We need discussions about how to untangle integrations of your user model with
Verizon/Yahoo's auth system, how you'll consolidate all the microservices,
which ongoing migrations you'll halt, the puzzled looks you'll have at
undocumented code that performs nested eager-loaded lazy migrations of data,
etc.

I've been involved in a multi-year migration effort. I expect this may be the
same for y'all. It'd be fun to have an account of something that is so
prolific and well known.

------
romwell
So, the real question is: are the censorship policies going to be reversed?

To be specific, is adult content going to be kosher on Tumblr again? Because
if not, I'd have very little faith in the platform (and I do have an account
there).

~~~
knd775
Nope.

>Mr. Mullenweg said his company intends to maintain the existing policy that
bans adult content. He said he has long been a Tumblr user and sees the site
as complementary to WordPress.com. “It’s just fun,” he said of Tumblr. “We’re
not going to change any of that.”

~~~
ethbro
That choice boggles the mind.

If you're worried about cross-links between non-adult and adult content
tarnishing the platform, add better features for user flagging.

They (before the Yahoo and Verizon cluster&#-1s) were essentially sitting on a
gold mine of training data, and ongoing training data generation, for an
industry-leading porn detection engine.

A subscription filtering product that would be worth $$$.

Throwing that away because of some overly prudish concept of brand identity is
hilarious.

~~~
mevile
> That choice boggles the mind.

Serving ads is hard when there's porn on the site.

~~~
coldtea
That boggles the mind as well. The purpose of an ad is to be seen. Whether
it's seen next to porn should be irrelevant.

I guess, because prudery.

~~~
nopriorarrests
>Whether it's seen next to porn should be irrelevant.

It does not work that way. If some average person sees some brand advertised
on WSJ and FT, and another competing brand on PornHub he will attach more
'premium' value to a first brand, and will pay more for owning product from
this brand. It's only normal and a part of human nature.

People enjoy content from PornHub, but they want to be associated with
something advertised on WSJ/FT/NYT/etc. People want to signal status, not just
own a good stuff.

~~~
coldtea
> _It does not work that way. If some average person sees some brand
> advertised on WSJ and FT, and another competing brand on PornHub he will
> attach more 'premium' value to a first brand, and will pay more for owning
> product from this brand._

That doesn't explain the connection of "porn" with "less than premium". You
call it "normal and part of human nature" but looks like totally cultural.

Historical prudery, and a past that associated looking at adult content with
"low status", lesser citizens (and not what the "proper people do", does
explain it.

(While we of course know that people of all statuses and walks of life look at
porn, from the industrialist, to the bank executive, to the judge).

> _People enjoy content from PornHub, but they want to be associated with
> something advertised on WSJ /FT/NYT/etc._

I'd understand it if we were talking about high status ads, yaugt ads, hi-fi
ads, expensive clothes ads, and so on. But most people don't read or care for
WSJ/FT/NYT -- that's a small minority. Most people read magazines just as
popular/mass market as People, Reader's Digest, CNN, FOX, USA Today and the
like, and advertisers have no issue advertising at those.

~~~
brettz
There is still massive stigma around consuming porn. Less than half of
Americans think that watching porn is morally acceptable.
[https://news.gallup.com/poll/235280/americans-say-
pornograph...](https://news.gallup.com/poll/235280/americans-say-pornography-
morally-acceptable.aspx)

Brands don't want to be next to content that has that stigma.

~~~
asdff
The people with that stigma aren't going to be looking at that content anyway.

~~~
brettz
They think it's immoral but they definitely still look at that content. For
advertisers it's about brand perception and not appearing next to immoral
content.

------
Gpetrium
It is worth noting that Tumblr was an indirect acquisition by Verizon when
they bought Yahoo in 2017.

It seems to have had stable unique views up until Aug-Sep 18 [1]. At some
point it suffered from country-wide bans in places such as Indonesia. The
country bans coupled with a ban from the iOS App store [2] caused direct
downward pressure on viwership. This has led to a rapid drop in viewership in
the months after [3]. Considering the amount of legislation towards telecom
companies and the potential risk to the Verizon brand by proxy, it was
imperative that the company would sell Tumblr.

Due to the current political environment in the US, it is unlikely that
Automattic will open the gates that partially made Tumblr what it was in the
17-18 era for the next 3-6 months, that is unless they take a very
conservative take on reviewing that kind of content prior to it being posted.

[1] [3] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/261925/unique-
visitors-t...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/261925/unique-visitors-to-
tumblrcom/) [2] [https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/17/18100156/tumblr-apple-
ap...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/17/18100156/tumblr-apple-app-store-
ios-missing)

~~~
carbocation
Their adult content ban in December 2018 probably also accelerated that
decline: [https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/14/18266013/tumblr-porn-
ban-...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/14/18266013/tumblr-porn-ban-lost-
users-down-traffic)

~~~
cortesoft
I think the adult content ban was in response to being blocked in some
countries and by iOS... they banned adult content so those bans would be
reversed

------
skilled
Surprised by this news. Tumblr has lost a ton of momentum since its policy
change, and the site itself doesn't have a very strong "brand" audience
attached to it.

Fun fact: I can't recall the last time I either opened a Tumblr link or saw
one in the wild. But maybe that's just me.

~~~
PopeDotNinja
Every time I go to visit Tumblr, it asks me to log in. If I can't lurk on a
content site, I'm moving on.

~~~
whywhywhywhy
Every time I visit a Tumblog subdomain it just kicks me back to my own Tumblr
dashboard and has for around 2 years now. When it started happening people
said it was a bug but seemingly it's intentional? Not sure I understand the
point but presumably this is for some sort of metrics they push?

~~~
fireattack
They set their blog to private. You can only view it from a sidebar in your
main dashboard.

------
robbiet480
Axios now reporting [0] that the purchase price was under $3 million

[0]:
[https://twitter.com/danprimack/status/1161038705295089664?s=...](https://twitter.com/danprimack/status/1161038705295089664?s=21)

~~~
mijustin
‪$3 million for Tumblr seems like an incredible deal.‬

‪(As a comparison, Automattic bought a small bootstrapped startup
[WooCommerce] in 2015 for $30 million)‬

~~~
CriticalCathed
Didn't Yahoo pay more than a billion for it? Yikes.

At this price it seems that this was more of a liquidation than a sale.

~~~
aodin
$1.1 billion cash [https://www.businessinsider.com/yahoos-board-
approves-11-bil...](https://www.businessinsider.com/yahoos-board-
approves-11-billion-purchase-of-tumblr-2013-5)

~~~
trazire
After-tax loss of around $877 million.

------
minimaxir
> Mr. Mullenweg said his company intends to maintain the existing policy that
> bans adult content. He said he has long been a Tumblr user and sees the site
> as complementary to WordPress.com. “It’s just fun,” he said of Tumblr.
> “We’re not going to change any of that.”

Not surprising, but in light of that statement one wonders what the value
proposition of this acquisition is aside from an acquihire.

~~~
rmason
They haven't published a sale price. Doubt very much if Matt Mullenweg over
paid for it. If the price is low enough that Tumblr cash flows or close to it
with existing advertising revenue then it was a pretty smart purchase.

~~~
ojbyrne
Techcrunch says the number is "nominal:"
[https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/12/verizon-is-selling-
tumblr-...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/12/verizon-is-selling-tumblr-to-
wordpress-parent-automattic/)

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I think after Verizon failed so hard on their Oath thing, they probably just
want to dump all the crud they bought in the process.

~~~
Bartweiss
I've been wondering if you could trade successfully just by shorting literally
everything Oath buys into. Their acquisition list is basically just a subset
of the Startup Graveyard at this point.

------
opportune
Automattic will probably be much more effective at handling Tumblr since they
have experience with content platforms. Whereas for Verizon, Tumblr was way,
way outside their core competency.

It was always a shame at how Verizon seemed to mismanage Tumblr so it's
exciting that Tumblr may become relevant again!

~~~
erikpukinskis
Yeah, Automattic probably got a steal. I doubt they would've been able to
afford Tumblr in its heyday, or pay the price Yahoo paid.

Wordpress doesn't seem to ever have been able to push into the "social"
discovery space. I bet Automattic folks have a bunch of half-baked ideas that
didn't make sense for Wordpress but would be great directions for Tumblr.
Seems like they were able to "buy low" so-to-speak and get access to a whole
landscape they not only competed with but couldn't have afforded.

------
no_wizard
I know there are a lot of nay sayers in this thread about the viability of
this acquistion but consider this:

> Even still, Matt says Tumblr’s user base is, “several times larger than
> [WordPress.com].”

I don't know what Automattic paid exactly, but the story speculates that:

> Dan Primack of Axios is reporting a “source familiar” put the price, “well
> south of $20 million.”

So even if Tumblr is plateaued or declining still, it has several magnitudes
of declining (for lack of a better term maybe?) before it even hits the _same
size as wordpress.com_

Using the $20 Million Dollar as the ceiling here, all they would need to do is
convert:

\- four million users to their $5 month plan to make back $20 million dollars

\- two million five hundred thousand users to the $8 a month plan to make $20
million dollars

\- eight hundred thousand users to their $25 dollar a month plan to make $20
million dollars

\- forty five thousand users to their $45 dollar a month ecommerce plan to
make $20 million dollars

Now, if you figure they'll likely monetize _some_ of these users on a wide
variety of these plans, the numbers start to pan out quite quickly. This
doesn't count things like ad revenue on free tiers, for instance.

~~~
cf498
Like others have quoted, south of 20m means south of 3m. At that price tag
grave digging makes complete sense if you can stem the running costs.

------
buboard
Tumblr is in a free fall for years, especially after last december. What is
there for wordpress to take? the domain name? it's not that great ;) Maybe
it's worth it to convert the few remaining blog owners?

I _don 't_ think tumblr is a valuable brand name, most of its adult blogs have
moved to twitter and newtumbl, and judging from google trends that was ~50% of
the searches.

Anyway automattic seems a good fit , but i hope they didn't pay too much for
it.

[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=tumblr](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=tumblr)

------
lesinski
Facebook bought Instagram for $1B. About a year later, Yahoo bought Tumblr for
$1.1B.

~~~
umeshunni
That's crazy (and true).

Instagram is worth $50B-200B today based on their revenue contributions to
Facebook on the conservative and their growth contributions on the generous
end.

Tumblr as it turns out, is worth less than $3M
[https://twitter.com/danprimack/status/1161038705295089664](https://twitter.com/danprimack/status/1161038705295089664)

------
davidwitt415
As someone who used Tumblr more like Dribbble and not for 'adult' content, I
think this is a great move. I like Automattic as a company and I trust Matt
will find a way to make Tumblr relevant again for creators without having to
resort to the LCTG - lowest common traffic generator.

------
riffraff
I'm not sure if tumblr can still be saved, but if it can, Automattic is
probably a place where it could happen.

I wish them the best of luck.

------
sct202
With Verizon selling off chunks of Yahoo like Flickr and Tumblr, what did they
even want from Yahoo?

~~~
nugget
In theory, the Yahoo acquisition held a lot of potential for Verizon. In
reality, Verizon operationally mismanaged many parts of the business and
destroyed most of the value. Tumblr is one visible example of that. It's
unfortunate but not uncommon. Once the deal closes, internal politics rather
than common sense and innovation rules and a small handful of bad leaders or a
small set of perverse incentives can sink the whole ship.

I view the ability to successfully execute on acquisitions of Yahoo's size as
one of the key differentiators between tech giants who will survive into the
next generation and those who won't. Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft
all have a much better (by no means perfect) track record than the older more
traditional businesses trying to catch up to them (telecoms like Verizon
included). Telecom is a capital intensive business. Tech is a human capital
intensive business. Just one extra word but a big difference.

~~~
basch
Yahoo still has some strong brand recognition in some sectors, and COULD make
a massive comeback if Verizon made the right moves.

Yahoo Finance, Yahoo News, Yahoo Fantasy, Yahoo Email/Messenger.

Verizon should release a WhatsApp, FBMessenger, iMessage competitor and let
you pick if you want it to be Verizon, Yahoo, or AIM themed. Nostalgia is all
the rage. Being able to use AIM (like facebook chat at the bottom of a page)
while I browse Yahoo News and Yahoo Finance, and Yahoo Fantasy....

~~~
umeshunni
No one outside the US has heard of Verizon and most of the products (whatsapp,
messenger) you named have the majority of their users outside the US. Most
internet users today have also not heard of or have any nostalgia for Yahoo
Messenger or AIM.

~~~
basch
have most people heard of Verizon OR Yahoo OR AOL or ICQ? They are sitting on
a bunch of brand names that DO have some sort of recognition.

If facebook can have three separately branded interoperable products, why cant
someone else try. They can market the four products to different markets with
different aesthetics, and under the hood, its one messenger base. Verizon
absolutely has the power to force and plow themselves into the market through
sheer will and stubbornness.

------
jotm
I think we all know who's going to be the ultimate owner of Tumblr.com

[https://blog.pinboard.in/2017/06/pinboard_acquires_delicious...](https://blog.pinboard.in/2017/06/pinboard_acquires_delicious/)

------
ekc
This is interesting, given Automattic has one of the...weirdest views on free
speech there is today.

Near-absolute free speech, within the means of the law, with really odd
exceptions.

~~~
JBReefer
Isn’t that majority opinion in America? I only see opposition to free speech
in niche communities.

~~~
jedberg
Most sites start that way. That was our policy on reddit too. If it was legal
it was allowed. But you can see where that leads -- as you get bigger you
attract a crowd that may be legal, but not one you want to support.

The best analogy is that I support your right to spew your hate speech if you
want, but I'm not going to open my house and let you do it in my living room.

Most sites eventually decide that they don't want to be associated with that
speech and clamp down.

~~~
mffnbs
Steve's take on Reddit these days almost seems like he's doubling down on the
whole "free speech" thing for better or for worse.

I personally left the site after eleven years. Steve actually permanently
banned me after I had pointed out a few instances where racism was not only
allowed to live, but seemingly encouraged.

~~~
SkyBelow
I can think of at least one subreddit that often hits the top of r/all that
will limit posts only to people who have sent a picture of their forearm to
the mod to verify their race. Somehow that is allowed. Literally submitting a
picture of your skin for the color to be judged. _headdesk_

~~~
ryacko
Why not, forearms are still pretty identifiable, all the pictures of forearms,
user names, and IP addresses will subject to administrative subpoena the next
time something happens.

Or if someone feels like it.

------
qnk
For me the most important aspect of this acquisition is that Automattic is a
fully remote company. Tumblr's office space in New York City must be very
expensive, I wonder if they're getting rid of it and transition everyone to
remote.

~~~
photomatt
Automattic has had offices in the past, so there is some precedent. The Tumblr
team has a strong office culture, so we don't want to break anything that's
working well. Simultaneously we believe the future of work is distributed, and
over the next decade that's the direction we firmly want to head. If you want
to learn more about this, including hybrid organizations, check out my new
podcast at distributed.blog.

------
sequoia
CW Old man comment: I tried to use tumblr years ago but the UI was so baffling
I quickly gave up. Specifically: I never knew what would happen if I clicked
on something. Does this “favorite” the post? Reblog it? Take me to the users
page? How do I see the original post page (not the reblog)? How do I see the
6000 people who responded to this post?

Maximal violation of principal of least surprise. I could never figure
anything out so I gave up.

------
chiefalchemist
Medium isn't the Medium it used to be. WordPress.com and Tumblr are now
controlled by the same outfit. Then there's Blogger, a Google toy.

How long before someone else sees opportunity in current limited amount of
choice for blogging consumers?

~~~
Alir3z4
I've seen it already.

[https://www.gonevis.com](https://www.gonevis.com)

------
cfv
Two things I loved about Tumblr that were very much not the social aspect
(something about the community did just never work for me) were the stupid
easy to use publishing tools and simple template language. I may have made
some 600 of those site templates over the years and it was FUN. Later design
changes tried to push the social thing more to the front (which, again, idgaf
about) and so I left. But it'd pretty cool to start seeing SOME of that in wp,
which is in this kinda weird middle spot right now where it's not hard to work
with but enough of a chore to pay someone to do it for you.

------
buboard
Price has tumbld to $3M apparently. At this price the original founder could
buy it back. Despite their shenanigans they could reengage their users
(including the adult themed ones)

------
dejawu
I see this as great news; my first reaction to hearing it was excitement. A
lot of comments here are talking about the porn but outside of that, tumblr
has a community with a uniquely sardonic sense of humor and is a platform for
a host of independent artists and creators, and I would be incredibly sad to
see it die. IMO Automattic will make for decent stewards of the platform
(hell, anybody would be better than Verizon + Yahoo) and I have cautious
optimism for tumblr's future.

~~~
photomatt
Thank you — the combined teams will do our best to make your optimism
deserved.

------
lostlogin
I got an email yesterday asking to confirm I wanted to keep a very old
account. I wonder if they are firming up their user stats?

------
vassilyk
This is such a good news for tumblr. It's sad that key internet services like
del.icio.us, tumblr, and I'm sure others got destroyed be Yahoo! But, it's
good to see that some managed to stay alive and might have another life after
having been Yahoo!'d

------
aussieguy1234
It's looks like Tumblrs strict new moderation policies aren't going to be
reversed.

I've long been a Tumblr user and because of these policies I created Libr to
replace Tumblr [https://app.librapp.com](https://app.librapp.com)

The front end progressive web app is open source [https://github.com/cipher-
code/libr](https://github.com/cipher-code/libr)

It'll be interesting to see if Tumblrs code gets open sourced. I used to run
the biggest WordPress deployment in the world outside of WordPress.com and
worked with a few Automattic devs in the process.

~~~
carlinmack
Hi just to let you know your acronym for the LGBT+ community (LGBTQIKAP+) is
unecessarily long and it comes off like you're trying too hard. I'm pretty
into tumblr identities and queer politics and I can't think of any identity
which starts with a K. Queer is just as good as the common LGBT+ but some
people still associate it with the slur and don't feel comfortable with
identifying with it. The plus really is the umbrella for asexual, intersex etc
that is "left out" by just using LGBT+

~~~
np_tedious
Kink.

[https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=LGBTQIAPK](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=LGBTQIAPK)
(#2)

They use a slightly different order, but I'd imagine it's the same thing.

------
zxcvbn4038
It should be interesting to see how this proceeds. When I was a Tumblr they
invested a huge amount of effort in being as nasty as possible to Yahoo and
fighting/rebeling against each and everything Yahoo asked of them. I left
right at the Verizon merger so I can’t say if that has changed, but if that
culture is still there it will make it challenging for any purchaser. Not to
reward their behavior but it might have worked out better in the long run,
yahoo’s tech environment was heavily customized and integrated, it would be
very difficult to extract any other Yahoo property from their portfolio.

------
exogeny
Does anyone want to try to elucidate whatever bull case Yahoo! modeled out to
buy it in the first place? Because God knows anyone with a brain should have
probably been able to see that it was going to be a disaster.

~~~
amyjess
Back in the '90s, Yahoo! owned some of the hottest properties on the Internet.
But by the end of the '00s, those properties were all Web 1.0 dinosaurs that
had long been surpassed by modern platforms. They wanted that old relevance
back; they wanted to buy a modern platform that was popular with young people
and had a huge userbase and cultural influence.

And Yahoo!, being Yahoo!, never really knew what to do with that acquisition
and just let it start to die on the vine, and when Verizon took over, they
pissed away whatever goodwill they had left by gutting Tumblr.

~~~
exogeny
Sure, but that's not really a model, right? (Sorry, not to attack you.) I
really hope the MBAs on the M&A team for Yahoo! didn't just say "Well, we used
to be cool, but we're not anymore, so.."

Tumblr was growing, but it was extremely young (read: low HHI, difficult to
target, resistant to advertising) and extremely brand un-safe (read:
impossible to monetize). So they had to believe one of four things:

1\. The brand would grow into an older demographic, despite being not designed
as such

2\. Users would not leave in mass once brand-safety initiatives were to be put
in place and/or advertisers wouldn't care

3\. Some other business model would emerge, despite that not happening to
almost any other similar consumer product ever

4\. Display advertising would reverse the trend of CPMs plummeting and being
sucked up by Facebook and Google

I can't imagine any competent M&A analyst actually looking at Tumblr and the
state of the Internet ultimately believing any of them, which is why the deal
was hugely baffling then.

~~~
derefr
I would presume that the business model for Tumblr is the same as the business
model for Snapchat. Whatever the heck it was/is.

------
allenleein
According to Axios: Price less than $3 million.

[https://www.axios.com/verizon-tumblr-wordpress-
automattic-e6...](https://www.axios.com/verizon-tumblr-wordpress-
automattic-e6645edd-bc73-45c2-9380-9fe8ca34291f.html)

[https://mobile.twitter.com/danprimack/status/116103870529508...](https://mobile.twitter.com/danprimack/status/1161038705295089664)

~~~
bishala
That's sad. I am sure Yahoo could have made more than that in 3 months by just
injecting 3rd party ads.

------
memmcgee
I'm surprised how low the buyout price was. Like Verizon basically killed
Tumblr with the adult content ban but only $3million? I'm sure the net worth
of Tumblr's employees is worth more than that. They should've sold Tumblr to
the employees and then turned it into a co-op if they were going to sell it
for that little.

------
wyclif
I have a very old Tumblr account that I got locked out of (I forgot to update
my email address, don't have access to the old domain email, and therefore
can't reset. When I tried contacting Tumblr recently, they wouldn't help me
even try anything at all to verify the account.

Will Automattic allow me to get my old account back?

~~~
fwn
If you don't have access to your identifier, what should they do about it?

Social engineering is a surprisingly large attack vector. I'd be concerned if
it were possible to gain control over an account this way.

~~~
wyclif
Not necessarily true. I understand what you mean but there are other ways to
identify and verify an account. In fact, I had an account with one other
company where I forgot to update my email address and they were able to verify
me.

------
tyingq
That's actually a good fit. Bravo. I expect Automattic understands the space
infinitely better than Verizon.

------
Balgair
For reference:

"Tumblr sold for the cost of 2-bedroom San Francisco home in Noe Valley"

Source:

[https://twitter.com/backlon/status/1161069910392393729](https://twitter.com/backlon/status/1161069910392393729)

------
seebs
I wonder if the new people will do anything about the "site is actively
hostile to photosensitive people" thing. I used to use tumblr, and we
reported, pretty much every year or so, the thing where login pages or "not
found" pages always had full-page flashing or fast-moving animated GIFs,
because that was a horrible source of seizure-inducing experiences, migraines,
etcetera.

I always assumed it was a considered and intentional choice by the tumblr
staff to actively drive those people away.

I also note: I didn't go there for porn, but I left over the porn ban, and
will not even consider returning while the porn ban remains. I had >40k posts,
I met the kid we ended up adopting there, and so on. I had a lot of engagement
with the site, but while porn wasn't emotionally important to me, the side-
effects of the porn ban made the site completely useless.

------
anigbrowl
Pretty amused to see a billion $ go up in smoke because people were upset
about porn.

~~~
brettz
It wasn't worth anywhere close to a billion long before they banned porn.

------
ycombonator
[https://www.huffpost.com/entry/yahoo-tumblr-havent-
screwed-u...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/yahoo-tumblr-havent-screwed-
up_n_3607706)

------
ferros
This is so confusing to me. They’re in the same sector but completely
different in terms of technology and approach.

It’s almost like Tesla buying a petrol powered car company and just keeping it
as is.

------
totaldude87
I was lucky to get out of Tumblr on the first part of it's decline. Very very
sad to see one of the best blogging platforms getting shuffled from one team
to another :(

------
sharno
If Automattic could transform Tumblr into a better alternative to Medium, that
could be a good strategy to revive the platform

------
8bitsrule
I blogged on the Wordpress site for a time. They like to lock options down
tight. A -little- less tight than Stumbleupon, but not much Keeps it simple?
Yes, that and nothing more. As a blogger, there's not much room for
innovation.

At one time Tumbler (tried it a bit very early on) -did- have that option
going for it. But Tumbler's obviously been fading. If WordPress tries
WordPress-like 'reforms', I see little hope for Tumbler.

------
classics2
So they bought it, murdered it then sold it for scrap. How is this not
considered gross financial incompetence?

------
ejz
So, Dan Primack is reporting that it sold in the neighborhood of $3m.

So the porn was the part worth a billion dollars. Huh.

~~~
starpilot
Someone on Blind mentioned that this is about the cost of a midrange house in
the Bay Area. Incredible.

------
aceon48
how is nobody talking about the absolutely terrible decision to purchase or
manage this acquisition by Marissa Meyer? How do you spend $1.1B on something
in 2013 and then sell it 6 years later for $3M? I mean that's about as total
of a loss as exists.

------
jasonhansel
Well, I guess now we'll see how committed Automattic really is to FOSS...

------
albybisy
@photomatt can we have our (blocked) tumblr blogs back please?

------
cung
Tumblr was censored to drive traffic to Reddit and Twitter, which creates a
more centralized crowd. The decision to censor Tumblr makes absolutely no
business sense for tumblr, which means the main motivator is something else.

~~~
gerikson
Wait, so Verizon/OATH censored their platform to drive traffic to competitor's
sites? What master plan is this?

~~~
cung
Vanguard is the major shareholder in both, so they aren't really
competitors.[1]

[1] [https://www.econ.uzh.ch/en/newsandmedia/opinions/Index-
Funds...](https://www.econ.uzh.ch/en/newsandmedia/opinions/Index-Funds-and-
Monopolization.html)

------
Applejinx
Welp, can't get worse. Good luck.

------
patientplatypus
Tumblr took away all the porn and that was more or less the only real reason
to use it. Instagram is better.

------
aphroz
They should buy MySpace also

------
aylmao
This move excites me a lot. Tumblr isn't really about "brands" (in spite of
what Oath would've wanted you to believe)— it's a lot of things, but at the
end of the day, at it's core, it's a blogging platform.

IMO it had a lot of potential in the late 2000s but the execution just wasn't
there, and I have a few theories why that could've been:

\- Cost of revenue. Tumblr was pretty media-heavy from the start (vs Twitter
for example, which started as short snippets of text, reddit which didn't host
its own images/video until much later, etc). The cost of this, per user, was
probably huge. Moreover, they had to power things like custom themes, custom
sub-domains, 7 different kinds of posts, etc. That doesn't sound cheap.

\- Location. It matters a lot, and growing a company like this in NYC was
probably harder, especially at the time, then it would've been in SF or the
bay. Be this in terms of getting the right engineers, investors, managers,
etc.

\- Ambition. I've heard from a reliable source that David Karp, originally,
simply didn't want Tumblr to grow huge and become this behemoth of a tech
company. He kept it at about a dozen engineers for as long as he could, and
even when the company started growing more, he doesn't seem to be an empire-
building entrepreneur like Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates. Now that he's out of
Tumblr, he's fallen completely off the radar. I doubt he will build anything
else. He's got the money he needs, so it wouldn't surprise me if he just
retires.

I think it had, at one point, the potential to compete with the likes of
Instagram and VSCO for the younger creative demographic (Can't beat Tumblr's
customizability, and some themes make great portfolios). Or with twitter as a
place to post random thoughts and follow celebrities (Taylor Swift, afaik,
still uses Tumblr. Tumblr invented reblogs before Titter invented retweets
afaik). Or with Snapchat and the like for the younger demographic who likes
privacy and anonymous features (it had an anonymous question/answer feature
before tbh, a company since acquired by Facebook).

But it didn't happen.

At this point, I don't think it makes sense for them to even try to make it
happen. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. They're here to stay as the primary
players in their respective markets. The space where I feel there's still room
for Tumblr to shine is back in its core competency, which is the fully
customizable "personal site".

The fact you can follow Tumblr sites and be followed is icing on top of the
cake but not a core competency to be leveraged because the feed market is
crowded with all the aforementioned players. The fact you can take any
content, and publish it on the web in any format you want (thanks to how
highly customizable Tumblr profiles are) is amazing and should be the primary
focus.

Essentially, Tumblr cannot compete in feeds, but it can compete in profiles
and use its feed as a killer added benefit.

Let's look at what Automattic has achieved with WordPress. It offers you a
fully-customizable site, to post your content, and _a third_ of the top 10
million sites (by Alexa ranking) are using it [1]. What I want to see is
WordPress building up Tumblr to be like this— an option for people looking to
set up websites.

Square just bought Weebly for $365 million, and it accounts, at the moment,
for 0.4% of the top 10 million CMSes [1]. The space for small-shop online
commerce is evidently valuable.

Lets say WordPress pitches Tumblr as a competitor to Squarespace or Weebly in
the e-commerce field. It's already-existing social features could boost the
value of its commerce features considerably. Maybe as a competitor to
Squarespace or Behance in the personal-portfolio field. Again, its already
existing feed could have amazing added value. As a creative I'd consider it
over Behance right away for exposure. If you were an artist, would you prefer
a SoundCloud that also allows you to set up a personal music site, complete
with custom url, online shop, cool looks, etc? Imagine a writing and discovery
experience that is as good or better than Medium, but you can customize the
front page of publication to not look anything like medium.

Long-term, and if they align the protocols, Tumblr could become a follow
button for the web. But first it has to become a larger part of the web and
this is where Automattic I think can really excel with Tumblr.

I'm very excited.

[1]:
[https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management...](https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management/all/)

------
kraig
I get why Verizon is selling it, but I don't get why Automattic buying it is
news.

------
gregoryca
Full text (since Wall Street Journal is known to put stuff behind a paywall):

[https://pastebin.com/xmKTutBq](https://pastebin.com/xmKTutBq)

------
consultSKI
Cool.

------
daveheq
Good

------
meerita
I guess they're doing this only for the traffic. Because I don't recall any
interesting Tumblr to visit. Everything interesting can be found in other
places, like Medium or their own hosted websites.

