The porn streaming giant Pornhub is extremely interested in buying Tumblr as confirmed by Pornhub Vice President Corey Price. Tumblr faced backlash from its users when it banned adult content from their platform last December. The app faced a significant drop in the traffic since December after the ban on adult content disappointed a majority of its users.
Corey Price said that their main aim in this acquisition, if it happens, would be to restore the NSFW image of Tumblr. On the other hand, Tumblr owner Verizon is currently looking for a potential buyer for their blogging platform, which has failed to meet the revenue targets as reported by Wall Street Journal.
Corey Price said in a statement, Tumblr was a safe haven for those who wanted to explore and express their sexuality, adult entertainment aficionados included. He further added, we’ve long been dismayed that such measures were taken to eradicate erotic communities on the platform, leaving many individuals without an asylum through which they could comfortably peruse adult content.
Tumblr has its ownership switching from one buyer to the other in the past. At first, the blogging platform was purchased by Yahoo for $1.1 billion in 2013. It was by the year 2016 that the value for this blogging platform was reduced to $230 million and then, Tumblr went to Oath, which was the former name of Verizon Media Group. Verizon bought Yahoo in 2017 and the survival of Tumblr at Verizon has been quite difficult.
NSFW content has been one of the key factors of revenue generation for Tumblr, and it was the time of last December when Tumblr decided to ban pornography from its platform. As expected, the introduction of SFW content initiated a mass user exit from their platform leaving the company struggling to meet the revenue targets. Before this ban was imposed, Tumblr was thought of as one of the best platform for independently curated and created pornographic content for the queers and the members of the LGBT community.
Not only for their poor decision of imposing a porn ban, but the platform was criticized for even poorly implementing the flagging of pornographic content. The AI kept flagging even the content that was not even closely related to adultery. This, however, does increased user engagement as people started making memes about it. Rumors of Pornhub buying Tumblr have been doing rounds for a long time since the porn ban and also after the porn streaming site said they would embrace the pornographic refugees.
Corey said that, there are obvious synergies between the two brands and value Pornhub could derive from Tumblr. We’re extremely interested in acquiring the platform and are very much looking forward to one day restoring it to its former glory with NSFW content.
Considering the backlash and the 16% drop in web traffic Tumblr has experienced after the porn ban, its match with Pornhub will actually be a good move. After the blogging platform was found promoting and keeping child pornography, it was banned and removed by Apple from the Apple Store. However, it was later restored after Tumblr enacted the porn ban. The deal is not yet final, but a decision will be made soon.
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