Verizon Media, the telco’s digital content unit, is looking for a buyer for its blogging platform Tumblr, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The sale comes amid users turning their back on Tumblr, and Verizon struggling to monetize its user-generated content.
A Verizon Media spokesperson declined to comment.
There is no word on how much money Verizon is looking to get from a sale, but it’s unlikely anywhere close to some of the site’s previous valuations. Yahoo acquired Tumblr for $1.1 billion in 2013. Verizon got its hands on the site when it acquired Yahoo in 2017.
Tumblr was at one point enormously popular with teens and other users looking for a mixture of blogging and social networking, and has to date amassed some 172 billion posts on 465.4 million individualblogs. However, user numbers have been steadily declining as its audience has moved on to other social networks.
Emarketer estimated Thursday that Tumblr’s U.S. user base peaked 2 years ago, and has since declined from 20.9 million to 18.8 million monthly active users. The service now has a U.S. audience share of less than 10% among social networks, according to Emarketer’s estimates.
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Verizon Media’s difficulties to monetize Tumblr manifested themselves in last year’s decision to ban adult content from the platform. Tumblr has previously been one of the most permissive social networks with regards to adult content, and the decision to ban this type of content led to a backlash among its users.