Yahoo aquires Tumblr

[baby]

This is great. I see many important points in this declaration:

* animated gif and posted on tumblr : Yahoo gets it. Its CEO as well.

* "We will operate Tumblr independently" : I think this is exactly what everyone hoped, and what all big acquisition should be like (Facebook did that with Instagram and it's great!). That means NSFW will stay NSFW.

* "David Karp will remain CEO." The most qualified people to grow Tumblr are the people already in place. This is great, everyone's relieved.

I really think Yahoo's back in the game now. I would never have used yahoo before. Now hundred thousands of people are. And they are from the new generation.

[dominotw]

' animated gif and posted on tumblr : Yahoo gets it. Its CEO as well' Why is this such a big thing, what is so hard to grasp about tumblr.

[magicg]

Yeah I love the gif!

[fakeer]

On Tumblr till quite late the only blogs(photo/video blogs) I followed were NSFW.

Recently I stumbled upon a few non-NSFWs that I like.

[caycep]

Aside from the infrastructure and potential monetization capabilities Yahoo brings to Tumblr, I suspect the major undercurrent here is Mayer becoming a mentor to Dave Karp. I don't see this deal happening w/ just any other pair of CEO's; I don't think the crew running the show before MM could really tell you what Tumblr was. Maybe Jerry Yang, but certainly not the interim team.

[trendspotter]

First ever acquisition announced by animated gif :) https://twitter.com/marissamayer/status/336453536298717184

[Indyan]

Well, at least she seems to "get" Tumblr.

http://marissamayr.tumblr.com/post/50907453679/the-great-wor...

[pizu]

Did anyone tell Marissa that Tumblr is free?

Spending $1.1 billion just to post a single post, seems just like a huge waste of cash...

[crisnoble]

Facebook is free. Google is free. LinkedIn is free. In fact Yahoo is free. Why would the freeness of tumblr have any negative effect on your analysis of this deal?

[sigkill]

Save the snark, human. It's free for others because she chose to plunk the B.

[31reasons]

User attention is not free. Its not money but its not free. Isn't that the story of the last 10 years?

[supercoder]

"Yahoo!’s personalization technology and search infrastructure"

What exactly is this 'personalization technology' ?

And could you just do http://google.com?q=site:tumblr.com and save a quick billion ?

[greyman]

They will probably force users to merge their tumblr and yahoo identity into one (similar to flickr).

[jayzalowitz]

cross network information pollination changes the equation.

[kmfrk]

She's got a great sense of humour. Love the missing "e" in "mayr".

[Domenic_S]

So web 2.0.

[brown9-2]

Seems like her full name was taken.

[apas]

How true.

[alex_doom]

I hope they're not forced to use Yahoo's awful login system the way Flickr was.

[chiph]

We will operate Tumblr independently.

This might be the way for Yahoo to succeed - operate as a holding company, plus optionally provide core services (identity management) to their independent properties.

[joonix]

So, no synergies other than ... authentication services? Then what's the point of buying them? Remember, Tumblr is barely making any money and was running out of cash. If Yahoo has nothing to offer them other than "identity management" and bureaucracy, then this is yet another failed Yahoo acquisition.

[quackerhacker]

I agree with you here! I think Mayer posting on Tumblr is a sign of her commitment and acknowledgement (obviously) to Tumblr....I hope more Yahoo employees (ESP Mayer), continue to use Tumblr consistently to feel what their users feel and be committed.

[smrtinsert]

Haven't they said this about every aquisition?

[mark_l_watson]

Dog food, eaten.

Very clever of her to use Tumblr to comment on the acquisition. Now I am curious enough to get a Tumblr account and play with it.

[mherdeg]

Marissa Mayer's blog post about Yahoo! having acquired Tumblr leads with the "Keep Calm and Carry On" propaganda image that the British government generated during the war but never used because it was only meant to be rolled out as a very last resort in the emergency situation that Nazis had occupied England.

[beseku]

I'm assuming you don't live or visit the UK often, as that poster is everywhere and is used in various forms by huge numbers of companies. There is absolutely no political subtext to its use anymore.

It's a meme, the equivalent to using a cat image.

[jere]

>only meant to be rolled out as a very last resort in the emergency situation that Nazis had occupied England.

Source? I'm reading that it was to be used if they experienced a "national catastrophe" or bombings with poison gas. I don't even know if it makes sense to print a propaganda poster for use after occupation.

[jacquesm]

> We will operate Tumblr independently. David Karp will remain CEO.

What this really says is that even though Yahoo! acquired all of the Tumblr stock it will remain an independent company and Yahoo will not ask for favours or influence Tumblr in any way.

So Tumblr will not be absorbed or coerced to do things it would not otherwise do.

But then, a few lines down:

> The combination of Tumblr+Yahoo! could grow Yahoo!’s audience by 50% to more than a billion monthly visitors, and could grow traffic by approximately 20%.

If Tumblr is still independent how does this grow Yahoo!'s audience?

> Tumblr can deploy Yahoo!’s personalization technology and search infrastructure to help its users discover creators, bloggers, and content they’ll love.

If Tumblr so far saw no reason to require a Yahoo! login and their first move (the ink on the agreement is not even dry yet) is to go for a Yahoo! ID (any other interpretation of that line?) and Yahoo! search then clearly they are not as independent as suggested in the first few lines.

I put very little faith in promises made by executives of companies being acquired or the ones doing the acquiring around the time of a major deal. See:

http://threads2.scripting.com/2013/may/myOneTalkWithMarissaM...

[zaoyang]

I have mixed feelings about this. Looking at Yahoo's balance sheet, it's 100% of its cash equivalents and 25% of its current assets.

On one other hand, the strategic value could be valuable: * Product team that understands the uniqueness of creative community (focus on reblogging, photo blogging, media focus) * Retention of creator community/teen community and its long term SEO potential * An audience that probably provides augmentation to Yahoo's total sites and probably adds unique users on a de-dup basis * There's also the viability of monetizing it the way Twitter/YouTube has monetized by carefully monetizing the users will not pissing off the community

On the other hand: * Yahoo doesn't have a good track record of internal executives working with acquisitions * They are still at the stage where their M&A integration is probably nascent (sales/marketing integration, executive alignment, OKR alignment)

Hard for me to make an opinion of this, but it is risky give Yahoo's balance sheet.

[dhotson]

“We promise not to screw it up.”

[jhowell]

Like a race car driver saying, "don't hit the wall... don't hit the wall" then bang, into the wall. Not being in Yahoo's shoes I don't know what I'd say. But I don't think that anything could be said to ease the concerns of the acquired customers. Actions speak louder than words and words can sometimes cloud actions.

[jaggederest]

"They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sedgwick#Death

[newbie12]

I never, ever would have predicted that Tumblr would beat Posterous in the blogging platform wars.

[seiji]

Care to elaborate?

[timrogers]

Is there any reason that Tumblr couldn't take the freemium route? It has high engagement, and a passionate audience that might well be willing to pay to keep the same Tumblr they always had, as opposed to a sanitised ad-friendly one.

Of course, there's the possibility that its audience won't have the means to pay up, or that people will just go elsewhere.

[tree_of_item]

Did someone squat marissamayer.tumblr.com? Why would she not just take it? It seems to be empty.

[lucian1900]

I think it's supposed to be disemvoweled as "tumblr" is.

[baby]

Inside joke : https://twitter.com/marissamayer/status/336483778153295872

[spdy]

Seems like a good time to sell to Yahoo! You get a lot of money and you can negotiate dream terms. Yahoo! is very desperate to get an audience and they need one.

If you exclude Flickr which Yahoo! service did you use in the last years, for myself none.

[robomartin]

I use their email. I prefer it to gmail and it is not subject to Google's robo-shutdowns.

[furconit]

These promises don't matter at all, once they are acquired they are owned by Yahoo and their fate is at the hands of the owner - flickr went through it , many others did, it's a predictable story

[shaydoc]

Has tumblr tumbled ? Shall the cool kids seek a new indie alternative ? Surely this acquisition creates such an opportunity for some Nu upstart ?

[sc00ter]

You've got to hand it to her, the 'NSFW?' 'WFH!' image is near genius!