Remember when Tumblr was acquired by Yahoo for $1.1 billion in 2013? And then was part of the Yahoo to Verizon deal, which promptly removed a large chunk of what made Tumblr interesting and different, its adult community?

• Yeah. That didn’t work: Verizon has decided to sell off Tumblr after already writing it down substantially. 
• It’s bad: Axios reports the deal with Automattic Inc., owners of WordPress, was for as little as under $3 million for the blog site. That means it sold it at a close to 99.7% loss.
• What?!

Here’s Verizon Media CEO Guru Gowrappan doing his best to explain: 

• “Tumblr is a marquee brand that has started movements, allowed for true identities to blossom and become home to many creative communities and fandoms,” said Verizon’s Gowrappan in a statement. 
• “We are proud of what the team has accomplished and are happy to have found the perfect partner in Automattic, whose expertise and track record will unlock new and exciting possibilities for Tumblr and its users.”
• Replace “perfect partner” with “thank god this particular company paid us to rid ourselves of this continuing embarrassment.”
• And replace “marquee brand” with “thing we didn’t know how to manage”.
• Still, 200 people get to keep their jobs at Tumblr, which is not an insubstantial payroll. 

But Automattic isn’t exactly going to take things back to the good old NSFW days, either:

• Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic Inc., told the Wall Street Journal the company intends to uphold the adult content ban.
• Tumblr and Wordpress will be integrated in some fashion.
• “It’s just fun,” Mullenweg told the WSJ. “We’re not going to change any of that.”

Here’s hoping we eventually get a tell-all. In the meantime, this graph via @somospostpc tells us enough: