Well, what I reported on Saturday has happened. It’s so big even mainstream media has covered it. Yahoo has purchased Tumblr for 1.1 billion dollars.
Yahoo has already integrated their blog into the Tumblr blog. Tumblr CEO David Carp is obviously excited, but due to the F-bombs in his statement, I won’t detail how excited. Because of this deal, Yahoo is expected to grow 20 percent in traffic and Yahoo’s audience is expected to grow by 50%. Tumblr is one of the fastest growing social media sites today, and that’s especially true on a mobile scale. More than half of Tumblr’s users get their fix on a device, not a PC or Mac. Plus, remember what a young audience this social media has.
On the surface, this looks like a great transition. Yahoo wants to reach a young audience. Tumblr wants to reach a big audience. They agreed to help each other sale ads, which I’m sure will do well. Needless to say, both sides are excited. But all of this is best case scenario. What’s the worst? You know censorship issues are going to come to play; look at Carp’s response to this deal. How are Meyer and Carp going to get along? If this deal fails in the long term, hundreds of employees and millions of users will be affected. So do you think this is a good merger?