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Report: Post porn purge, Verizon is attempting to sell Tumblr
After a purge of adult content that saw its traffic decline by a staggering 100 million views, old-school blogging site Tumblr is now apparently on the market, according to a report published Thursday.
The Wall Street Journal, quoting people familiar with the matter, claims that Tumblr’s owner, Verizon Communications Inc. is shopping Tumblr to prospective buyers as it tries to steady a media business that has struggled to meet revenue targets.
Tumblr, founded in 2007 by David Karp, came of age in the early days of blogging as a company with a high tolerance for adult content. The site was acquired by Yahoo Inc. in 2013. Yahoo was then acquired by Verizon Communications Inc. for $4.86 billion in July 2016, and in 2017 with the old Yahoo properties were folded into a new business called Oath Inc. that was subsequently renamed Verizon Media Group in November.
While purging adult content on Tumblr deeply affected the services traffic, Verizon made the decision based on appearance. Owning a site with massive amounts of porn was not a good look for one of the largest U.S. telecommunications companies.
Five months later, Verizon has decided to do what it arguably should have done in the first place: Sell the site.
After the porn purge, traffic on Tumblr has declined but is still substantial. According to Alexa, Tumblr is the 77th most popular site on the internet as of today and the 47th most popular site in the U.S.
One potential buyer could be popular pornography provider Pornhub. In an interview with Forbes, Pornhub Vice President Corey Price confirmed that it’s was interested in acquiring Tumblr.
“Tumblr was a safe haven for those who wanted to explore and express their sexuality, adult entertainment aficionados included,” Price said. “We’ve long been dismayed that such measures were taken to eradicate erotic communities on the platform, leaving many individuals without an asylum through which they could comfortably peruse adult content.”
He added that there are “obvious synergies between the two brands and value Pornhub could derive from Tumblr. We’re extremely interested in acquiring the platform and are very much looking forward to one day restoring it to its former glory with NSFW content.”
Pornhub as long been an innovator, having launched a virtual reality service in 2016 and later deploying artificial intelligence to identify porn stars in 2017.
Photo: 1nesdliveira/DeviantArt
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