“The board of Yahoo, the faded Web pioneer, agreed on Sunday to buy the popular blogging service Tumblr for about $1.1 billion in cash, the companies announced Monday, a signal of how the company plans to reposition itself as the technology industry makes a headlong rush into social media,” Michael J. De La Merced, Nick Bilton and Nicole Perlroth report for The New York Times.
“The deal would be the largest acquisition of a social networking company in years, surpassing Facebook’s $1 billion purchase of Instagram last year,” De La Merced, Bilton and Perlroth report. “For Yahoo and its chief executive, Marissa Mayer, buying Tumblr would be a bold move as she tries to breathe new life into the company. The deal, the seventh since Ms. Mayer defected from Google last summer to take over the company, would be her biggest yet. It is meant to give her company more appeal to young people, and to make up for years of missing out on the revolutions in social networking and mobile devices. Tumblr has over 108 million blogs, with many highly active users.”
(photo by Brigitte Lacombe)
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
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“Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, originally designed the Apple I computer while working at HP and offered it to them under their right of first refusal to his work, but they did not take it up as the company wanted to stay in scientific, business, and industrial markets.”
Odd how things turn out from what are seemingly minor decisions at the time.
Playboy, if they’re still in business, need to do a “Hot Babes Of Corporate America” calendar. They could feature Ms Meyer for all twelve months.
I like how you added the “if they’re still in business” part. That’s funny. Are they? I wouldn’t have a clue these days.
I see this as a good move.
Could someone with some better information clear up the business models for me? The impression i get is that Yahoo, in contrast with Facebook and Google, seems interested in offering businesses and consumers blogging platforms and services that can, but don’t have to, transparently support advertising if desired. FB and Google merely want all the user data they can access by any underhanded means possible — so they can sell that user information to other advertisers. And as usual, the scummy operators make more money than the “faded” honest company.
I just looked at Yahoo! for the first time in years. Was curious if they cleaned it up at least to the point where I could find the search field within five minutes. I looks a little better, I guess.
Tumblr? I’ve seen a couple links to it over the past few years. I think I remember clicking on one once, then promptly closing that window.
There’s just too much going on. Yahoo! looks like a gossip site, and I’m still trying to figure out exactly what Tumblr is… Oh wait, no I’m actually not.
Cash? Wait, Yahoo has $1 billion in cash?
Thoughts on Yahoo’s future? Does anyone think they have a second wind?
Great. Just great. And now Yahoo will ruin Tumblr, too.
Great here we go with that picture again 🙂