Verizon has announced plans to sell its blogging platform Tumblr.
The cable giant acquired the popular blogging network back in 2017 when it took over Yahoo and its associated assets, but now the company has decided it’s time to say goodbye to the brand as it begins looking for potential new homes.
Latest data suggests that Tumblr is home to more than 450 million blogs with an eye-watering 172 billion posts, though most of these are image posts and reblogs.
According to The Wall Street Journal, however, Verizon is planning to sell off Tumblr, and the sales process is “ongoing” and may not necessarily result in any transaction.
Last night, Corey Price from a popular adult entertainment website told Buzzfeed News that his company was “extremely interested’ in purchasing Tumblr and its associated assets, and that he is “very much looking forward to one day restoring it to its former glory with NSFW content,” suggesting that they were ready to put in an offer for the social network.
Last year, Tumblr made the controversial decision to remove adult content from its platform, after Apple announced it would ban the app from the App Store if it could not get on top of its adult content problem.
Tumblr has long been considered a platform for artists to share their work and had a large user base who used the network exclusively to view and distribute adult material, which was allowed under the user agreement until the end of 2018.
Since the switch, Tumblr has witnessed an annihilation, dropping millions of users and a steep decline in web traffic as a result.
Users have turned to other networks to share their adult content including Twitter, which has an open policy but limits such content to over 18s.
Tumblr was picked up by Yahoo back in 2013 for an incredible $1.1 billion, and the plan was to design a more youthful Yahoo centered around content and entertainment.
However, the company didn’t make the best use out of its new asset, doing little with Tumblr or its brand.
When Verizon purchased the Yahoo group in 2017, Tumblr became part of its family.
Last year, the media giant admitted that the takeover of Yahoo and AOL was a mistake, following a $4.6 billion write-down.
Perhaps offloading Tumblr will give the company some return on its investment, even if it doesn’t match the $4.6 billion it paid for Yahoo two years ago.
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