tumblr Sold to WordPress.com Owner for Mega-Cheap (YNOT)

Read the full article by Mallory Hall at YNOT.com

It was recently announced that Verizon Communications Inc. has agreed to sell tumblr to the owner of WordPress.com.

Verizon is apparently unloading the blogging site — a space that Yahoo purchased for over one billion dollars in 2013 — for a song: Less than three million dollars, according to Dan Primack, “biz editor” at Axios.com.

tumblr is a free service that hosts millions of blogs where users can upload photos, music and art. Once an internet darling, the site has been trounced by spaces like Facebook, Reddit and other services in recent years.

The site’s user numbers dropped significantly following 2018’s “porn ban” — a terms and conditions change that occurred last December wherein “posts that contain adult content will no longer be allowed on tumblr.” Per analytics from SimilarWeb, visits to tumblr dropped from 521 million in December 2018 to 437 million in January 2019.

Mallory Hall is from Central Texas. She has worked in journalism since her university years and enjoys exploring unexpected occurrences in ordinary places.