

Yahoo aquires Tumblr - captn3m0
http://marissamayr.tumblr.com/post/50902274591/im-delighted-to-announce-that-weve-reached-an

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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.

~~~
bulatb
What's (allegedly) hard to grasp is that Tumblr is Tumblr, not a generic
money-engine that eats X dollars worth of fuel and puts out $Y worth of value.
Mayer is acknowledging that part of Tumblr's recipe for spitting out that $Y
is the culture that the users and the team have made, and that approaching it
as if that didn't matter will not work.

Whether that's how Tumblr's integration into Yahoo! will actually be treated
remains to be seen.

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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.

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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...](http://marissamayr.tumblr.com/post/50907453679/the-great-workplace-
dilemmas-of-our-time)

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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?

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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).

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

~~~
brown9-2
Seems like her full name was taken.

~~~
Killswitch
She could have reserved it to stop squatters, and used the "mayr" version.

Edit: She just confirmed it:
<https://twitter.com/marissamayer/status/336483778153295872>

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

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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.

~~~
chiph
My (unspoken) assumption is that Yahoo management can successfully monetize
Tumblr. Is Tumblr going to continue to bleed dollars? Yes, in the short term.
But the Yahoo board is willing to invest 1.1B in them, and obviously think
that in the future the Tumblr services will be a complementary product
offering and will become profitable. Hopefully Marissa & the board have a
roadmap for fixing & growing the firm, and that this wasn't a spur-of-the-
moment decision.

There are other likely synergies - back office functions (accounting, HR,
etc), but also ad serving. I don't personally know how good the Yahoo ad
network is, but by all accounts, it has got to be better than Tumblr's.

I think the key change that has to happen is that acquisitions have to have
the choice in picking a Yahoo technology to adopt (or not..) and that it can't
be forced down their throat. And if Marissa is smart, she'll block any Yahoo
people asking questions like "So, why _aren't_ you using our fabulous tech?",
because merely asking the question takes away valuable time.

~~~
mcintyre1994
The great contradiction being that if "Yahoo management" are monetizing
Tumblr, it's hardly independent in a strict sense. I know where you're coming
from, but it was only last year David admitted he was an idiot to say ads made
him sick - he didn't push them very hard and I think that's going to be a
tough balance. Oh and Tumblr claimed their roadmap isn't changing, which if
true means Yahoo's board's roadmap is irrelevant. It'll be interesting to see
how this one plays out.

~~~
chiph
David was likely approaching the subject from the standpoint of a user -- no
one likes ads that are too in-your-face and irrelevant. But as a Division Head
(no longer CEO...), he has to ensure that he is profitable. Like I said, I
don't know how good Yahoo's ad-serving network is, and hopefully they have a
broad & deep enough pool of content to show visitors, so that Tumblr remains a
viable publishing platform.

Given Marissa's previous stint at Google, I expect her to focus her attention
next on their ad-serving. A large & strong revenue stream will keep the board
off her back and give her time to fix other things there that need fixing.

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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.

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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.

~~~
mherdeg
I live and work in central London.

Having seen the poster _everywhere_ for a while now, it has been hard to avoid
learning a bit about the image's history, including the recent hilarity with
the EU trademark ( [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/8785585/Battle-rages-over-
Ke...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/8785585/Battle-rages-over-Keep-Calm-
and-Carry-On-souvenirs.html) ) and the image's organic growth in popularity
from 2005 ( <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7869458.stm> ).

I think it's funny to see people use things in apparent ignorance of their
historical context; for example I was totally bummed that
<http://www.gophercon.com/> wasn't about the protocol.

~~~
cbr

        people use things in apparent ignorance of their
        historical context
    

The people behind the Go language are definitely aware of the gopher protocol.

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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...](http://threads2.scripting.com/2013/may/myOneTalkWithMarissaMayer)

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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.

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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.

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newbie12
I never, ever would have predicted that Tumblr would beat Posterous in the
blogging platform wars.

~~~
seiji
Care to elaborate?

~~~
newbie12
There was a point a couple years ago when Posterous was really innovating and
Tumblr seemed dead-- the Tumblr staff (CEO?) were ranting at their users and
there were technical problems.

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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.

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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.

~~~
DJNewStyle
I thoroughly enjoy your use of "disemvoweled". Did you coin this?

~~~
scott_s
I was curious, too, but no: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disemvoweling>

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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.

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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

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

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sc00ter
You've got to hand it to her, the 'NSFW?' 'WFH!' image is near genius!

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mohitz
The blog heading is too apt. Marissa Mayer's tumblr :)

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Crake
From the notes on the post:

"somethingcatchyhere reblogged this from marissamayr and added:

    
    
        you better not fuck this one up “marissa mayer,” if that’s even your real name"
    

Stay classy, tumblr. (Or "stay uninformed," more like.)

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yarapavan
acquires or aquires?

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tmzt
Tumblr+Yahoo!

~~~
Domenic_S
Yahoomblr?

~~~
pseut
I like "Tumblroo!"

