Social-media site Tumblr sold for only $3M

Tumblr, the one-time darling of social media, sold for a whopping $1.1 billion in 2013. On Monday, in perhaps the latest mark of its decline, the site was reportedly bought for just $3 million by the owner of Wordpress, another blogging giant that was a rival.

The site launched in 2007 under David Karp, who had dropped out of high school at age 15 and founded Tumblr when he was 20. In a 2011 interview, Karp said he had wanted to set up a blog but didn’t think the traditional, long-form formats such as Wordpress were the right fit.

“I had all these cool videos, links and projects that I wanted to put out there, and I had a really hard time doing it,” Karp told .net magazine in 2011. “I wanted to do something different. I was determined not to compete with Wordpress.”

The site picked up steam as popular bloggers and whole universities moved content over to Tumblr. Musicians, photographers and writers followed suit. The popularity paid off. In 2013, Yahoo bought Tumblr for $1.1 billion. But Yahoo ultimately wrote off much of Tumblr’s value. Verizon took over Tumblr in 2017 when it acquired Yahoo.

This week, Wordpress owner Automattic took over Tumblr for an undisclosed amount and brought on about 200 employees. Automattic did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the sales price.

A 2018 policy change alienated many of Tumbler’s users and longtime supporters. Sex-focused subcultures and pornography had been tacitly allowed on the site, but in December, Tumblr announced a nudity ban that included photos, videos and GIFS of genitalia and female nipples and any visual depictions of sex acts.

Automattic Chief Executive Matt Mullenweg told The Wall Street Journal that his company plans to keep the ban in place.