Verizon is selling blogging site Tumblr to the owner of WordPress for a 'nominal' amount of money

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Verizon is planning to sell blogging site Tumblr to Automattic, the parent company of other blogging site WordPress.

WSJ cited the deal as a “nominal amount” compared to its previous $1 billion purchase price.

Automattic will take on 200 Tumblr employees, the report stated. The company already oversees Longreads, a long-form publishing site, in addition to WordPress.

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Automattic, the parent company of publishing site WordPress, is planning to purchase blogging site Tumblr from Verizon for an undisclosed amount, according to a Wall Street Journal report Monday.

The price of the acquisition is unclear, but the report stated it was a “nominal amount” compared to Tumblr's previous $1 billion purchase price by Yahoo several years ago. As part of the deal, Automattic will take on 200 Tumblr employees.

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Verizon came to own the popular blogging site after purchasing Yahoo in 2017. The site was popular among artists and writers for its niche culture and easy-to-use services, but eventually lost out to larger sites like Reddit and Facebook. Many devoted Tumblr users turned to the site for its lax rules around hosting adult content and were outraged over Verizon's decision to ban all adult content from the site in 2018.

Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg told WSJ that he intends to keep the ban in place, according to the report. Automattic oversees several publishing companies in addition to WordPress, including long-form site Longreads, a comment filtering and tracking service, and an avatar generator.

Verizon, formerly known as Oath, has been reportedly shopping around for a buyer for Tumblr since May as part of the ongoing restructuring of the media portion of its business that includes HuffPost, AOL, and TechCrunch, among others.