That's probably the biggest risk, yes: a big drop, followed by a slow decline. (Sort of the opposite of the "gradually, and then suddenly" line.) I suspect the

That's probably the biggest risk, yes: a big drop, followed by a slow decline. (Sort of the opposite of the "gradually, and then suddenly" line.) I suspect the bottom line comes down to the bottom line, though; Tumblr has spent over a decade being a pit that absorbs money, and Verizon is not the kind of company that's going to run a service like that as an experiment. They're making a bet that kicking off the pronz will increase ad revenue, and I'm sure they have projections to back that bet up. That doesn't mean the projections are right, of course, but I don't see how a money-losing Tumblr would have continued under Oath. If this bet doesn't work and they shut it down, everyone will say "ha, we told you that you shouldn't have kicked off the pronz," but the pronz ain't never brought in the bucks for them, and we can safely assume "explicitly set out to monetize the pronz" was never in the cards.