Tumblr is facing exciting times ahead, under the helm of Automattic Inc. CEO Matt Mullenweg. After months of speculations, Tumblr was finally sold off by Verizon to the Wordpress owner for reportedly $3 million, and users can experience possibly great changes moving forward.
Media conglomerate Verizon, which also owns the notable technology magazine, Techcrunch, finally surrenders. After acquiring it as part of its 2016 Yahoo acquisition for billions of dollars, it never got to understand how best to make it grow further. It later came into the conclusion that Tumblr simply was a mistake - it was aligned with neither the Yahoo or nor Verizon brands.
But not everything is at a loss for Verizon, Yahoo or Tumblr. With Automatic Inc. buying it at a fraction of the price compared to how much Verizon paid for it, Tumblr just might see some growth while Verizon could have cut off some losses, as reported by Techcrunch.
As of now, the full details on what will happen to Tumblr under CEO Matt Mullenweg are yet to be uncovered in the coming days, months, or years. However, as early as now, analysts claimed that it could not be denied that Tumblr will be a better fit at Automattic. It will be joining a popular and relevant portfolio that includes Wordpress, Akismet, and Longreads. Wordpress is a widely popular and highly used blogging service while Akismet is an effective spam filtering service. Longreads lastly, is a growing long-form storytelling platform.
In an interview with the New York Times, the CEO revealed what could be expected now that Tumblr is under his company. Essentially, at a very basic level, the CEO promises new functionality of the site. "I don't want to dive deep into the road map, but some things are just a little obvious. Just to give one example that I know has been pressing on people's minds, when someone tries to visit your site they won't get a huge block of legal language. I think it'll increase people's traffic quite a bit actually," he explained.
Asked whether he thinks Tumblr can still compete with other sites when the social internet has undergone a lot of changes, he answered in the affirmative. He explained that the online world is a very ''tribal" in nature. People connect with others who share their interests and find their tribe online. Tumblr is a very tribal product and therefore, will appeal to all kinds of people. "And at its best, Tumblr is a very tribal product. You're able to connect with all facets of your identity and, in fact, express different parts of yourself very easily through different accounts," he said. "That's something that I do believe Tumblr encompasses and in fact it created a lot of what's best about the social web," he added.
He also gave an insight into the people he wants to target when the new Tumblr starts functioning. He claimed that he wants "the most creative" to use Tumblr. He believes that it is a great platform for those with creative juices, from artists to writers, and even musicians.
