News came out recently that Verizon’s Oath unit (which is partly made up of Yahoo’s web assets) sold Tumblr to Automattic (they develop WordPress and run WordPress.com) for $3 million.
Obviously, this is a big drop from Yahoo’s original $1+ billion purchase, but there’s still quite a lot of value to be salvaged from Tumblr. This HN discussion comments that Tumblr is still receiving 2.5+ billion page views per month, which doesn’t even include their mobile views. I see a lot of articles moaning about Tumblr’s problems, but it is still a powerful brand and I’m quite surprised another company didn’t buy it up – $3 million is a firesale price.
Of all the articles discussing Tumblr’s sale, I like this one the best: a post from one of VCs who originally invested in Tumblr. Regardless of what happens to Tumblr, I think it will be remembered as one of the first places to easily and quickly share thoughts, a place which made it easy to create communities and fandoms, and a surprisingly upbeat and positive place compared to other social media sites.