Discussion

• @danprimack Dan Primack on x

  3/ Story updated: Price less than $3 million.

• @danprimack Dan Primack on x

  Automattic paid peanuts for Tumblr. Source familiar puts it well south of $20 million. Reminder: Yahoo paid $1.1 billion for it. https://www.axios.com/...

• @broderick Ryan Broderick on x

  The Tumblr community reacts to today's news pic.twitter.com/XUkEd6Q6S1

• @jeffdonof Jeff D'Onofrio on x

  1/2 I'm very excited about Tumblr's next chapter and looking forward to working with @photomatt and the entire team at Automattic. I'm most excited for what this means for the entire Tumblr community. There is much more to do to make your experience a better one, and I'm super

• @reckless Nilay Patel on x

  Imagine if Tumblr had been an independent company fighting for the ad dollars that now go to Google and Facebook by default - they had scale, cultural impact, an innovative CEO, the whole deal. Instead Yahoo bought it and slowly crushed it into dust

• @davidkarp David Karp on x

  Just wanted to add my congratulations and thank you to everyone at WordPress and Tumblr. Matt is a visionary, and the team at WordPress has built something absolutely foundational to the Internet. What an amazing home and opportunity for Tumblr. https://tmblr.co/...

• @marcoarment Marco Arment on x

  This is pretty cool. Can't think of a better owner today than Automattic for Tumblr's huge creative publishing community. https://www.wsj.com/...

• @__apf__ Adrienne Porter Felt on x

  I am extremely upset that no one told us Tumblr was for sale for an amount we could have Kickstarted https://twitter.com/...

• @photomatt Matt Mullenweg on x

  I think the internet and adult content seekers will be fine. Life finds a way. If people want big policy changes here, put pressure on app stores of @Apple and @Google, no one else has any leverage. https://twitter.com/...

• @g0ffthew @g0ffthew on x

  Nobody is better at being bad at capitalism than Yahoo. https://twitter.com/...

• @pinboard @pinboard on x

  Less than $3M is what I paid to buy Delicious! I could have bought Tumblr and had 200 employees! https://twitter.com/...

• @bradesposito Brad Esposito on x

  Yahoo paid 1.1 BILLION for tumblr in 2013 and promised “not to screw it up” lol https://twitter.com/...

• @lessin Sam Lessin on x

  Tumbler sells for more than 99% off the original retail price ... seems like a big missed opportunity for private equity ... you could have changed some rules, trimmed fat and made a killing with this in the 1980s! pic.twitter.com/IRVBp1osKk

• @notaxation Colin Moriarty on x

  Yahoo! paid nearly $5 billion (that's five billion dollars) for Geocities in 1999. So really, this is nothing. https://twitter.com/...

• @mdudas Mike Dudas on x

  What do you call a company that was valued at $1 billion in 2013 and is valued at less than $20 million in 2019? A @tumblr! <I'll be here all week, folks> https://www.businessinsider.com/ ...

• @hello_tailor Gavia Baker-Whitelaw on x

  tumblr is now cheap enough that a random celebrity could've just bought the whole platform on a whim. (yahoo paid $1.1 *billion* six years ago.) https://twitter.com/...

• @backlon Dieter Bohn on x

  Tumblr sold for the cost of 2-bedroom San Francisco home in Noe Valley https://twitter.com/...

• @workforfood Diego Zambrano on x

  Tumblr with porn: $1.1 billion. Tumblr without porn: $3 million. https://twitter.com/...

• @johnmaloney John Maloney on x

  Quick story I've told before: 2010 when @tumblr and @wordpress were @ peak our platform went down @photomatt personally texted me copied his CTO and asked how they can help

• @reckless Nilay Patel on x

  Tumblr getting bought and bought again only to be neglected, watered-down, and sold for spare change instead of growing to be a real competitor to Facebook and Twitter is like exhibit A in why mergers are bad

• @mmasnick Mike Masnick on x

  Yahoo bought Tumbr for $1.1 billion in 2013, directly promising not to “screw it up.” Verizon buys Yahoo, bans anything that even sniffs of “adult” content... and then sells Tumblr off to Automattic for *less than $3 million*. Damn. https://twitter.com/...

• @numbersmuncher Josh Jordan on x

  Verizon/Yahoo would've been better off just shutting down Tumblr quietly than having to live with the embarrassment of paying $1.1 billion to sell it for almost nothing just a few years later. https://twitter.com/...

• @reckless Nilay Patel on x

  But hey, at least the VCs got paid out

• @sarahfrier Sarah Frier on x

  Tumblr sold for “please take this money-losing thing off our hands” https://twitter.com/...

• @craigsj Craig Bro Dude on x

  Let me fuckin find out mans bought this company for over a billion dollars and ran a community of dedicated content creators to Twitter and far beyond only to sell at a loss for an eight-figure sum... https://twitter.com/...

• @justicar Glenn White on x

  It's almost as if driving the majority of their user base off the platform by changing the terms of service completely backfired. https://twitter.com/...

• @dimensionmedia David Bisset on x

  🤔 @Krogsgard “Any plans for a plugin ecosystem with @tumblr?” @photomatt “When it's on #WordPress backend that sort of thing can be explored.” #Tumblr Developing: https://poststatus.com/...

• @dimensionmedia David Bisset on x

  If @tumblr gets commerce (and that's an if) it would “likely be simpler features first”. @photomatt #WordPress #Tumblr Developing: https://poststatus.com/...

• @loudmouthjulia Julia Alexander on x

  You: “tumblr is a blogging platform and so is wordpress, so yes.” Me, an intellectual: “let the porn fly free, my dudes.” https://twitter.com/...

• @dcseifert Dan Seifert on x

  eagerly look forward to learn how much of a bath veriz-ahoo took on this https://twitter.com/...

• @chronotope Aram Zucker-Scharff on x

  The negative differential between what Yahoo buys companies for and what it sells them for could fund entire new startups. https://www.theverge.com/...

• @entirelyamelia Amelia Gapin on x

  Whoa! Automattic is buying Tumblr! This is actually probably a really, really good thing for Tumblr. I'm not sure there's a better fit for Tumblr. Congrats to all of my Tumblr fam! https://staff.tumblr.com/... https://twitter.com/...

• @mathewi Mathew Ingram on x

  Add that to the pile of other billions vaporized by Yahoo https://twitter.com/...

• @lucasmtny Lucas Matney on x

  Actually hilarious how monumentally bungled Yahoo's Tumblr acquisition was, hoping there's a tell-all in the future. For now, I'll just hope for someone getting their hands on the price tag of this deal. https://twitter.com/...

• @wongmjane Jane Manchun Wong on x

  WordPress's platform + Tumblr's community (if any) = perfect match 😍 https://twitter.com/...

• @mikeisaac Rat King on x

  unicorn valuations are a transfer of wealth from dumb institutionalfunds and/or public company investors to smaller venture firms and founding team members https://twitter.com/...

• @photomatt Matt Mullenweg on x

  Thank you, Marco! Will do our best to make you proud about this next chapter for @tumblr. https://twitter.com/...

• @llsethj Seth Weintraub on x

  I'm going out on a limb and saying the price is “not much” and that worst case scenario, it can upsell existing non-bot Tumblrs to the Wordpress platform. https://twitter.com/...

• @brianmcc Brian McCullough on x

  Tumblr might live!! Seriously, this is closer to a sane outcome for Tumblr at long last. https://www.techmeme.com/...

• @louwhiteman Lou Whiteman on x

  I love @wordpressdotcom but the UI is flaky and times out an awful lot for a large service. Tumblr's best quality was ease of use. I'm hoping Automattic listens to the people they are bringing on board. They can help make wordpress better. https://twitter.com/...

• @bluechoochoo Andra Lpez on x

  “Mr. Mullenweg said his company intends to maintain the existing policy that bans adult content. He said he has long been a Tumblr user and sees the site as complementary to http://wordpress.com/. ” https://www.wsj.com/...

• @cebsilver @cebsilver on x

  Dear @automattic, bring back Tumblr porn https://twitter.com/...

• @alex @alex on x

  curio if this Verizon Media will cut loose other assets https://twitter.com/...

• @thekenyeung Ken Yeung on x

  Yahoo bought Tumblr for $1 billion and was written off when Verizon acquired Yahoo. Now it's going to be owned by Automattic, the parent company behind WordPress. At least *this* deal makes sense. https://www.wsj.com/...