Tech: Tumblr Has A New Owner, Which Isn’t Pornhub And It Intends To Keep The Porn Ban

Tech WordPress Tumblr Matt Mullenweg Wall Street Journal Verizon Media Guru Gowrappan Corey Price Hacker News BuzzFeed Ryan Broderick Pornhub

The company that owns WordPress.com is buying the microblogging platform and will keep the restriction on adult content.

Verizon has agreed to sell the microblogging platform Tumblr to Automattic, the company behind the blogging tool WordPress.com. Automattic’s CEO Matt Mullenweg said he intends to keep the ban against NSFW content.

The Tumblr acquisition is the largest buy for Automattic in terms of both price tag and staff size, Mullenweg told the Wall Street Journal.

“Adult content is not our forte either, and it creates a huge number of potential issues with app stores, payment providers, trust and safety,” Mullenweg said on Hacker News on Monday. “It’s a problem area best suited for companies fully dedicated to creating a great experience there. I personally have very liberal views on these things, but supporting adult content as a business is very different.” Matt Mullenweg

Mullenwag in a Tumblr post on Monday said he’s committed to preserving the Tumblr community. “I have worked on WordPress my entire adult life — 16 years now — and so the democratization of publishing is near and dear to my heart. Tumblr and WordPress have always been very philosophically aligned there,” he said.

In a statement Verizon Media CEO Guru Gowrappan called Tumblr an essential venue to share new ideas, cultures and experiences.

“Today’s announcement is the culmination of a thoughtful, thorough and strategic process,” Gowrappan said. “Tumblr is a marquee brand that has started movements, allowed for true identities to blossom and become home to many creative communities and fandoms. We are proud of what the team has accomplished and are happy to have found the perfect partner in Automattic.”

News of the acquisition shut down speculation that Pornhub would purchase Tumblr. Vice President Corey Price said in an email to BuzzFeed News in May that the porn-streaming giant was extremely interested in buying Tumblr. Rumors began circulating that month that Tumblr’s parent company, Verizon, was looking to offload the social network after missing revenue targets.

Automattic, according to its website, currently has around 150 million users and operates in 70 countries. Automattic owns a slew of smaller startups, including Longreads and Simplenote.

By:Ryan Broderick is a senior reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York City.

Contact Ryan Broderick at ryan@buzzfeed.com.

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Full articles:https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/tumblr-has-a-ne