Verizon reportedly wants to do what every young millennial did after 10th grade.
After a few years of reblogging bliss, Verizon is now looking to sell off Tumblr, people familiar with the matter tell The Wall Street Journal. It's unclear just how much Verizon is seeking for the blogging site, but it comes in a long line of selloffs and layoffs for the Verizon-AOL-Yahoo conglomerate formerly known as Oath.
Yahoo bought Tumblr for $1.1 billion back in 2013. But as The Verge puts it, "Yahoo never really knew what to do with Tumblr," and the purchase "did nothing to reverse Yahoo's business fortunes." It ended up writing down Tumblr's value by $230 million a few years later, the Journal notes. Yahoo was then sold to Verizon for $4.8 billion in 2017, and Tumblr was part of the deal. Verizon, too, has since second guessed that enormous purchase.
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The reported sale comes after Tumblr moved to block all explicit content from the site in December. Tech reporters roundly criticized that move as "backwards," but it was likely made because child pornography found on the site got Tumblr kicked off the Apple App Store a few weeks earlier.
Verizon did not respond to a request for comment. Read more at The Wall Street Journal.
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