Imagine for a second you wake up to discover that your favorite blog platform, Tumblr, had undergone a rather complicated family drama. Well, in the vast universe of digital acquisitions, this is precisely what happened. So, does Verizon own Tumblr? Well, sort of, but it’s a tale of corporate dealings that sounds more complicated than a soap opera plot twist.
Let’s roll it back to 2013 when Yahoo was feeling particularly prosperous and decided to throw a whopping $1.1 billion at Tumblr. Fast forward to 2017, and who swoops in to snag Yahoo’s assets? That’s right, Verizon! So, under their umbrella, Tumblr found a home, but only temporarily because the winds of the tech market are always shifting.
Now, here’s where the story gets even juicier. By 2019, Verizon realized that maybe Tumblr wasn’t the cash cow it thought it would be. Who needs a platform populated by memes, GIFs, and a bunch of eccentric niche communities when you have 5G to roll out? So, they decided to sell Tumblr. Who bought it, you ask? Drumroll, please… Automattic! Yes, the folks who run WordPress.com and, quite frankly, have a pretty good grip on the content creation world.
To put it succinctly, Verizon did own Tumblr for a hot minute—but it was really just a brief fling. They inherited Tumblr from their Yahoo acquisition, and it seems they were more interested in the shiny things like wireless tech rather than fostering a digital community full of passionate artists, bloggers, and people just being their wonderfully weird selves.
In a nutshell, you can breathe easy; Tumblr didn’t get sucked into Verizon’s ever-expanding digital empire for long. Instead, it transitioned over to Automattic, which has bigger dreams of giving creators and bloggers the tools they need to thrive and possibly add some pizzazz back into that platform.
So, next time someone asks if Verizon owns Tumblr, you can confidently respond, “Well, they did for a while until they realized it was like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.” Verizon is out, Automattic is in! And now it can spread its digital wings again, hopefully adding more gifs, memes, and quirky content that we didn’t know we needed until now.
