Verizon wants to sell Tumblr two years after acquiring it
It looks like Verizon is feeling some buyer's remorse with Tumblr.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that the telecom giant is looking to offload the social blogging site a little less than two years after acquiring it. It doesn't sound like there's a buyer yet and Verizon may not find one, according to the Journal, but the company is at least looking.
Tumblr was founded in 2007 and purchased by Yahoo for a whopping $1.1 billion in 2013. It was a landmark acquisition during former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's tenure, but it didn't really work out the way Yahoo planned.
Managerial missteps that some blamed on Mayer and a general lack of making money led to Tumblr being a bit of a dud for Yahoo. While popular, it never quite kept up with the likes of Facebook and Instagram. As a result, Yahoo wrote down the value of its $1.1 billion acquisition by more than $200 million in 2016.
Verizon bought Yahoo a year later, bringing Tumblr under its own corporate umbrella. The massive telecom has seemingly not been a much better fit for the site. All hell broke loose at the end of last year when Tumblr decided to ban all adult content over concerns about child pornography on the website.
NSFW content had been a Tumblr staple for years, but without a place to share it, a decent chunk of Tumblr's userbase left for greener pastures.
While Tumblr isn't dead by any means, its future is murky depending on who buys it. Aside from adult content, Tumblr has also been a rich source of memes, GIFs, and pretty much anything else the internet has to offer over the years. Yes, that includes the infamous black/blue/white/gold dress.
It'd be a shame to see it die.
Alex Perry is a tech reporter at Mashable who primarily covers video games and consumer tech. Alex has spent most of the last decade reviewing games, smartphones, headphones, and laptops, and he doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon. He is also a Pisces, a cat lover, and a Kansas City sports fan. Alex can be found on Bluesky at yelix.bsky.social.
