Verizon is selling Tumblr, a darling of early social media, to the owner of blogging platform WordPress.
Tumblr is known for its devoted fan base and has been home to angry posts from celebrities like Taylor Swift. It angered many users last year when it banned porn and “adult content,” which made up a big part of its highly visual and meme-friendly online presence.
But well before that, the site has already been drifting in the face of competition from Facebook and its Instagram service and from Google’s YouTube. Tumblr has also been overshadowed by Twitter.
Verizon got Tumblr through its 2017 purchase of Yahoo. Yahoo had bought Tumblr for $1.1 billion in 2013, but ended up writing off much of its value. Terms of Verizon’s sale to WordPress owner Automattic weren’t disclosed.
Verizon had hoped to create an ad business to compete with Google and Facebook but its media business ran into trouble. It has cut jobs and sold some Yahoo properties, including the photo-sharing site Flickr and Polyvore, a fashion and collaging site that was then shut down.
Taco Bell parent CEO Greg Creed to retire
Yum Brands has named its chief operating officer as its next chief executive, according to the Wall Street Journal.
David Gibbs will replace CEO Greg Creed, a YUM veteran and former CEO of Irvine-based Taco Bell, early next year, the Journal reported.
Gibbs, 55, will lead the parent company to KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell as efforts continue to grow the chains and expand delivery options.
Creed, 62, will remain on Yum’s board, the WSJ said. He was the CEO at Taco Bell until 2015 when he rose to the parent company. Greg Niccol assumed the CEO role at Taco Bell until he left the chain for Chipotle in 2018.
Earlier this summer Taco Bell named Nike president Mark King as its new CEO.
YUM has converted many of its stores in China to franchise units, a move that would free up cash for the company.
“The industry is probably changing now more than it has ever,” Mr. Gibbs, a 30-year veteran of the company, said in a WSJ interview on Monday. “We’re well-positioned to leverage that change.”
Saudi Aramco readies for IPO with India deal
Oil giant Saudi Aramco is set to buy 20% of Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries’ oil and chemicals business for about $15 billion, in a deal that gives it further heft and diversity ahead of a long-awaited IPO.
For India, the preliminary agreement amounts to one of the country’s largest foreign direct investments.
Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani on Monday told an annual meeting of shareholders that Aramco will also supply Reliance’s Jamnagar refineries with 700,000 barrels of oil a day on a long-term basis. The refining complex has a capacity to process 1.4 million barrels per day.
“This is the biggest foreign investment in the history of Reliance,” he said. “It is also amongst the largest foreign investments ever in India.”
Aramco is the most profitable in the world, posting bigger profits than the likes of Apple or Exxon and making it a potentially interesting investment target. On Monday, the company said it made $46.9 billion in the first half of this year, down about 11% from a year earlier due to a global decline in the price of crude oil.
Posted by https://goo.gl/TXzGV5
No comments:
Post a Comment