Tumblr’s latest tumble: A company once valued at $1.1B sells for less than $3m

Discussion in 'Wall St. News' started by dealmaker, Aug 14, 2019.

  1. dealmaker

    dealmaker

    Tumblr’s latest tumble: A company once valued at $1.1B sells for less than $3m
    Verizon, which has been trying to get rid of Tumblr for months and allegedly considering selling it to Pornhub in May, has finally unloaded the once-mighty blogging platform… for a mere $3m.

    WordPress’ parent company, Automattic, made the purchase
    Automattic, which is privately owned and is said to be considering an IPO, likely bought the beleaguered blogosphere to tack on a well-known, public-facing division to it business.

    Automattic will reportedly also take on Tumblr’s 200 remaining staffers and plans -- to the frustration of many bloggers -- to continue the controversial ban on porn that Verizon implemented last year.

    But Tumblr may survive after all...
    In spite of the chaos surrounding its numerous ownership changes, Tumblr still hosts more than 450m blogs.

    So, depending on Automattic’s plans, this latest purchase could finally give the platform enough stability to let its users do what they really want… blog about ugly renaissance babies in peace.

    Unlike Yahoo (which bought Tumblr for the now-infamous price of $1.1B in 2013) and Verizon, Automattic is known for its commitment to open source web design -- which could help the company succeed where so many others have failed.
     
    zdreg, Stockolio and vanzandt like this.
  2. Turveyd

    Turveyd

    I remember making fun of how stupid these prices where for Social Media platforms when they sold that, 3Mil sounds about right mind :)

    Entire world went kinda nuts didn't it over these things.
     
  3. Sig

    Sig

    I wonder how much MySpace is worth these days!

    To be fair, Facebook turned $51B in profit last year. Back in the day it wasn't clear which company or companies would be sharing in the $50B pie, but the world pretty accurately calculated the size of that pie. If you'd gone short the entire universe of social media platforms including Facebook ('cause none of us were that prescient) back then you'd be out a lot more on the Facebook short losses than you'd be up on the Tumblr (and the rest) short profit.
     
  4. Pekelo

    Pekelo

    I never visited tumblr. Out of curiosity I went to Myspace and I tried to click on links, and nothing loaded. How well....
     
  5. Pekelo

    Pekelo

    vanzandt likes this.
  6. Sig

    Sig

  7. Turveyd

    Turveyd

    22Bil, barely worth getting out of bed for imho!!

    Hadn't kept upto date obviously, didn't realise Facebook turning a profit these days finally, big 1's aswell, nice.

    Pretty impressive for an App mostly, web page and some servers running some code, impressive indeed.
     
  8. Sig

    Sig

    That's the beauty of network effects. The one who captures them gets massive barriers to entry for competitors and so doesn't really need to do much to maintain their position. If you're interested, that's actually why everyone was throwing the seemingly stupid money at the social network firms. They realized that only one or two firms were going to win that game and they'd get a big pie, so the name of the game was to grow as fast as you could in order to be that winner.
    Although to somewhat contradict what I just said, I think Facebook is at it's zenith from a demographic standpoint. Millennials and younger are only on Facebook to communicate with their parents, they've got their own set of networks that are rapidly evolving and increasingly specialized in both function and target audience.
     
  9. Turveyd

    Turveyd

    FaceBook works to keep in touch with mates I rarely see in short like most middle aged people that haven't really got the time for all the snapchat direct chat, although I use facebook for direct chat aswell.

    Not looked into the others, kids hate Facebook ofcourse.
     
  10. Snuskpelle

    Snuskpelle

    450m blogs - how many of those are active and what is the readership per blog?
     
    #10     Aug 14, 2019