Will Yahoo be more 'cool' with the purchase of Tumblr? - Five Days

Yahoo has once again dip into the checkbook for growth and shine it lost to Google, Facebook and Twitter. The veteran CEO dotcom Marissa Mayer yesterday made official cash purchase of the blogging platform Tumblr by 847 million, the largest acquisition of U.S. portal since the arrival of the directive last summer.

Yahoo

defended Tumblr buying could boost its audience by 50% to over 1,000 million monthly visitors and increase your traffic by 20%. It also said the company will continue to operate acquired independently and that its founder, David Karp, continue to lead the project.

“We will allow Tumblr Tumblr remain,” said Mayer, trying to clear any doubts that might cause a flight from users of this web publishing platform, something that happened with Instagram when it was announced that it was acquired by Facebook and Tumblr was repeated yesterday. According to Matt Mullenweg, CEO of WordPress, a blogging platform rival, over 72,000 blogs in one hour passed from Tumblr to WordPress after news. Mayer also tried to banish the specter that Yahoo can “charge cool product , like Tumblr, as it did with Flickr” says Ismael ElQudsi, CEO of Internetrepública.

Many experts wondered yesterday why Yahoo search with this purchase and if the price paid is excessive, especially when Tumblr is very modest-income by selling advertising and design templates-for $ 13 million in 2012 and a forecast for 2013 of 100 million. Some analysts noted that Yahoo seeks to attract young people, because Tumblr has a great prestige among them.

The history of this platform is truly spectacular. Its founder has created in six years a platform that hosts 105 million blogs today, with over 300 million monthly unique visitors. Its growth is well above Blogger (from Google) and WordPress (with which Microsoft struck a deal). In addition, Karp managed to attract its relevant project investors such as Sequoia Capital, Union Square Ventures, Betaworks, Spark Capital, Greylock Partners and Insight Venture, which now must be rubbing their hands.

Successes and challenges

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Growth : Tumblr was launched in February 2007 and is now available in 12 languages. Every second post hangs on Tumblr blogs.

Pornography: pornographic content hosted on Tumblr concern to some analysts. Will have to see how he manages Yahoo, but will be key to ensure advertisers that their advertising not appear linked to this type of content.

“Justify that payment by a company with that billing may sound absurd from a purely financial standpoint, but overlapping machine Yahoo sell advertising to the millions of page views of Tumblr results could lead to brighter than those obtained by this as an independent company, “he says in his blog Enrique Dans, professor at the Institute of Companies.

Another reason may be in the words of the creator of WordPress. According to Mullenweg, buying Tumblr makes it clear that “we are at the peak of the understanding of the value of publishing platforms on the web”. A view shared ElQudsi, who argues that “Web 2.0 is the triumph of ameteur , because these platforms (Tumblr, Facebook …) everyone can post pictures, for example, trying to be an artist “. Now it remains to see if Yahoo knows how to exploit the value they can generate these platforms “and give a company more” cool “, according to this expert.

Other social billionaire Internet era

Tumblr

buying Yahoo again reminded by other operations challenged by its high price like Instagram by Facebook. However, Yahoo’s CEO said that the acquisition of Tumblr is an exception. “We will not go into a career of mergers and acquisitions. Just do an operation of this magnitude when we find an exceptional company. “

Yahoo’s chief financial officer, Ken Goldman, adding that the purchase will not cause financial panic, as Yahoo has 5,400 million in cash. “We have resources to continue its share buyback policy,” he said in a conference call with analysts.

Tumblr

acquisition is the first purchase of Yahoo over 1,000 million since turning to Overture in 2003 by more than 1,600 million dollars. Similarly, despite the bulky figure, the new purchase of Yahoo falls far other transactions made at the time dotcom when acquired GeoCities and Broadcast.com 36,000 million by 4.900 million. Yahoo came up yesterday more than 1% in the first session after the announcement. Markets seem to see well the movements of a Yahoo, “which seeks to renew and remove its current retro image,” according ElQudsi.

who should certainly be more than satisfied is the founder of Tumblr. Karp, at 26, made the cover of Forbes a few months ago and is now part of the club and billionaires Internet social era, with Mark Zuckerberg. According to the filtered data, Karp could have pocketed 220 million dollars of the total operation.

Now Yahoo and Karp’s own loyalty depends achieve Tumblr users, ensuring that the operation is a success. “Tumblr becomes better and faster” defended Karp.