Six years after it was sold to Yahoo for over $1 billion, Tumblr is set to be sold again for a little over what it costs to buy a house in Sydney.
Axios reports that the home of all your mid-’00s angst, pretty picture blogs, and funny memes will be bought for anywhere between $3 million – $10 million. Automattic Inc. will buy the platform and take on its 200 employees.
Tumblr sold for the price of a 2-bedroom home in San Francisco. 😬 https://t.co/n1fPSni8eV
— Ashley Mayer (@ashleymayer) August 12, 2019
Automattic Inc. is the company behind another ’00s flashback, WordPress, and fought off interest (and genuine bids) from a site you’ve definitely never heard of, or been to: PornHub.
Automattic Inc’s successful takeover bid came with the caveat that the company probably won’t be bringing back much of the hardcore pornographic content Verizon (Yahoo’s parent company) banned last year. There was some hope within the Tumblr community that PornHub’s potential purchase of the site would result in a return to the old days, but that is looking less likely – at least for now.
Verizon is selling off tumblr already, like someone who bought a doll at a garage sale that was labeled “WARNING: THIS DOLL IS HAUNTED”, took it home, got tormented by a ghost, then went “hey, I think this thing is haunted”
— ragsy! (@ragsy_) August 12, 2019
Automattic Inc. CEO Matt Mullenweg said in a blog post (on his own personal Tumblr) that he looked forward to working with everyone from site.
“When the possibility to join forces became concrete, it felt like a once-in-a-generation opportunity to have two beloved platforms work alongside each other to build a better, more open, more inclusive – and, frankly, more fun web,” he wrote.
“I knew we had to do it.”
For the equivalent of corporate pocket change, who can blame him?
