It was announced officially this morning that Yahoo will acquire Tumblr in a deal worth a cool $1.1 billion. The all-cash agreement is expected to close in the second half of this year. Tumblr, the microblogging and social media platform, will retain CEO David Karp at the helm for at least four more years, per his agreement.
Also per the press release, Yahoo promises not to screw it up,
“Per the agreement and our promise not to screw it up, Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business. David Karp will remain CEO. The product, service and brand will continue to be defined and developed separately with the same Tumblr irreverence, wit, and commitment to empower creators.”
After days of rumors and speculation, the Yahoo board approved the deal sometime yesterday and dispatched the press release this morning.
Tumblr has an enormous user-base from regular bloggers to celebrity social media hounds, something that Yahoo will look to take proper advantage of. Conversely, Yahoo has been plagued with poor leadership and thousands of job cuts in the recent past, so it’s no surprise that CEO Marissa Mayer moved aggressively on the deal to solidify not only the new direction of Yahoo but her legacy as well. Mayer took to Tumblr herself to note some of the impressive user stats that Yahoo now boasts,
“From art to architecture, fashion to food, Tumblr hosts 105 million different blogs. With more than 300 million monthly unique visitors and 120,000 signups every day, Tumblr is one of the fastest-growing media networks in the world. Tumblr sees 900 posts per second (!) and 24 billion minutes spent onsite each month. On mobile, more than half of Tumblr’s users are using the mobile app, and those users do an average of 7 sessions per day.”
Karp, who’s certainly aware of the skepticism from his users, fans, and employees, wrote on the Tumblr staff blog that they all need not worry. He notes that Tumblr will remain exactly the same as it is, will serve the same purpose and audiences, and will have a vastly larger resource pool to pull from.
Everyone, I’m elated to tell you that Tumblr will be joining Yahoo.
Before touching on how awesome this is, let me try to allay any concerns: We’re not turning purple. Our headquarters isn’t moving. Our team isn’t changing. Our roadmap isn’t changing. And our mission – to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve – certainly isn’t changing.
So what’s new? Simply, Tumblr gets better faster. The work ahead of us remains the same – and we still have a long way to go! – but with more resources to draw from.
Yahoo is the original Internet company, and Marissa and her team share our dream to make the Internet the ultimate creative canvas. I couldn’t be more excited to have her help. We also share a vision for Tumblr’s business that doesn’t compromise the community and product we love. Plus both our logos end with punctuation!
As always, everything that Tumblr is, we owe to this unbelievable community. We won’t let you down.
Fuck yeah,
David
Also worth mentioning is Karp’s personal net worth has spiked to roughly $220 million.
Mayer now has a younger, faster-growing user-base to build upon. Yahoo has simply lost that “cool” factor in the past years and Tumblr, with its charm for fun, edgy, independent user-generated content, is just the spark Yahoo needs to keep its wheels churning. Now, we just have to see if Mayer and the other Yahoo execs will make good on their promise and now screw it up.
Let’s hear from both the Tumblr and the Yahoo faithful out there. Who is excited for this new deal? Who is writhing in agony? Let us know how you feel about the whole thing in the comments section below.
