Yahoo To Purchase Tumblr For $1.1 Billion, Board Approves Cash Deal
by Joe White
May 19, 2013
According to All Things D, the Yahoo board has approved a massive $1.1 billion cash deal to buy the popular microblogging and social networking website, Tumblr. While details concerning the acquisition are scarce, according to the website "sources close to the board said the deal was a foregone conclusion, and was an unanimous vote by the Silicon Valley Internet giant."
Apparently, there were no other competing bids to purchase the website, and the deal will be announced Monday morning, May 20, 2013, All Things D adds. The website continues:
As part of the deal, Tumblr CEO David Karp — who got a windfall of cash from the deal — will stay at Yahoo for four years at least and retain much control over the service, much in the same way Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom does at Facebook. But, as there, Yahoo will undergird Tumblr’s nascent advertising business with its large and established infrastructure. Yahoo had been mulling some kind of deal with the hip New York-based blogging site, from a strategic investment to an outright acquisition, for about six weeks. Sources said that the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s CEO Marissa Mayer has decided that buying Tumblr was going to be “the stake in the ground of what her strategy is going forward for Yahoo.” And that is to attract younger audiences with just the kind of user-generated content Tumblr has pioneered to huge growth.As a reminder, Tumblr offers iDevice owners a dedicated app, via which it's possible to access the service on the go. Just recently, it was announced that mobile ads would be appearing in this application, in a move made by the New York-based company in an attempt to further monetize the service. We'll update this article as more news becomes available. In the meantime, for further industry related news, see: The AppAdvice Week In Review: After Google I/O, Focus Shifts To Apple's WWDC, Song Skipping Reportedly The Cause Of Halt In iRadio Negotiations, and Verizon Shells Out $1 Million In Cash Prizes For DreamWorks' Turbo Racing League.
