Verizon has found a buyer for Tumblr. Automattic (the company behind Wordpress / Jetpack) will be the new owner. Unfortunately, it looks like they won’t lift the porn ban.
In May this year, after Verizon started seeking buyers for Tumblr, Pornhub said it wanted to buy Tumblr and end the site’s Verizon-imposed porn ban. Automattic will reportedly keep the ban in place.
“Mr. Mullenweg said his company intends to maintain the existing policy that bans adult content,” today’s Journal article said. “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.’”
I am not surprised either, but it would have been nice. I guess to make the platform profitable, they need big companies to advertise and that’s difficult when the majority of the Tumblr blogs are NSFW. On the other hand, they have lost quite a lot of users and traffic after the porn ban, so their stats are not as impressive as it once was.
Not sure if it’s true, but there are rumors about Auttomatic having acquired Tumblr for less than $20 Million, which is indeed ridiculous considering the fact that Yahoo once paid $1.1 Billion when they bought Tumblr.
There is an interview with the Automatic CEO about this on The Verge website. He does not seem to be closing the door on returning porn to Tumblr, sounds like they’re taking a wait and see attitude. He does seem to recognize the huge drop off in Tumblr use once porn was banned so that may be one reason they’re looking at allowing it again, but in a more regulated way. Fun Fact: according to this interview, Tumblr still gets tons more traffic than Wordpress. I would have thought it was the other way around.
I’m really surprised they found anyone willing to take it. I was following a few tech journos reporting on it a couple of months back and they were saying Verizon would be lucky to sell it for $15 Million, given the downward trend in value over such a short time and new competition doing so well, without needing app “permission” from the likes of Apple.
Tumblr was great, but they’ve hemorrhaged users and that doesn’t seem to be slowing. As soon as people discover NewTumbl they’re out of there.
Granted, some of the competition has dwindled now.
Cumblr has been useless for at least a week and users are reportedly moving elsewhere.
Sharesome has just decided to screw itself too, by restricting posts and usability.
There was another (I forget the name) which quickly messed up by starting to charge for basic functions within months of opening their doors.
NewTumbl seems to be going strong.
I think one of the biggest revelations to come from all of this is that Apple and Google are not the almighty Gods people assumed they were. NewTumbl has grown massively, replacing a major name in the social media world, without an app outlet and without Google traffic. The fact that they’ve achieved this should be a wake-up call and hopefully it’ll go some way to further diminishing the (perceived?) stranglehold those bigger sharks have on the tech world.
I don’t imagine Wordpress will be reversing this failed policy, I also don’t see the decline of Tumblr slowing down. I can’t comprehend what Wordpress thinks they can do with it, because even if they did reverse the adult ban today Verizon has already driven the brand into the ground and allowed competition to take its place.
It’s going to be interesting to see what happens with it, but I entirely predict Wordpress will end up closing it down within a year.