Verizon is looking for a buyer for Tumblr, and Pornhub wants it. Verizon has been approaching other companies to gauge interest in the blogging platform, which it acquired along with other Yahoo assets back in 2017.
Tumblr hosts 465.4 million blogs, which contain 172 billion posts. As noted by WSJ, the sale process is “ongoing” and might not result in an actual sale.
Pornhub VP Corey Price says his company is “extremely interested” in buying Tumblr and “very much looking forward to one day restoring it to its former glory with NSFW content.” However, the company didn’t say if it had made a legitimate offer to Verizon.
“Tumblr was a safe haven for those who wanted to explore and express their sexuality, adult entertainment aficionados included,” Price told BuzzFeed News. “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.”
Price’s comments refer to a major change Tumblr made last year, when it banned porn on the platform. The company has since been using AI to detect and automatically block images and videos that may contain adult content. (The AI is certainly not infallible, as we here at MacTrast have had two of our Tumblr photos categorized as porn. Both photos were Apple Watch related, oddly enough. It should be noted that appeals are allowed, and in both cases when we appealed the ruling, it was reversed, allowing the public to once again see the post.)
The move to ban porn from the blogging platform resulted in a high level of criticism and a steep decline in traffic for the platform. However, Tumblr has stood beside the decision. Other websites, such as Pornhub, reacted quickly to attract former Tumblr users driven away by the blog’s anti-porn stance.
Yahoo acquired Tumblr for $1.1 billion back in 2013, while the company was being run by Marissa Mayer, in an attempt to attract new, younger users to the company. However, Yahoo never seem to know exactly what to do with the blogging platform.
Verizon acquired the blogging platform as part of its $4.5 billion acquisition of Yahoo in 2017. Verizon’s seeking to rid itself of Tumblr is part of the company’s attempt to make the best of the acquisition, which many analysts see as a mistake. Verizon sold another piece of the Yahoo acquisition, photo hosting site Flickr, to SmugMug a year ago.