At the end of 2018, the microblogging service Tumblr, which is owned by Verizon along with the rest of Yahoo's assets, changed the rules for users. From that moment on, it was impossible to post “adult” content on the site, although before that, starting in 2007, everything was limited to filtering and “parental access”. Because of this, the site lost about a third of its traffic after just 3 months.
Now information that the owner is looking for buyers for the service. It is curious that one of the potential clients was the largest porn resource Pornhub. There it is , responding to a request from BuzzFeed News reporters, stating that they were “extremely interested” in buying Tumblr and would like to return “adult” content to the platform. PornHub Vice President Corey Price wrote about this.
There have been no comments from Verizon on this matter yet. However, it is possible that the company will agree to a similar outcome, because Tumblr could not become the source of profit that Yahoo and Verizon were counting on. And given the very fierce competition in the market for social networks and microblogging services, Tumblr has nothing left to offer users.
Of course, one should not rule out that this is just an information dump that will draw attention to the platform and increase its value. Indeed, according to SensorTower, over the last quarter the number of new mobile users of the service reached the lowest level since the fourth quarter of 2013. And compared to the first quarter of 2018, it decreased by about 40%.