Get Ready for Tumblr to Suck: Yahoo in rumoured $1.1bn bid to buy Tumblr.
Marissa Mayer, the former Google executive who is now in charge of Yahoo, is poised to create yet another nothing-to-riches tale in the web industry with the $1.1bn (£720m) acquisition of the blogging site Tumblr.
Mayer called Yahoo’s board together on Sunday afternoon to discuss the firm’s latest attempt to regain its former glamour and reports indicated the board had given its approval. Tumblr was founded in 2007 by David Karp, then 21, in a bedroom in his mother’s apartment in New York. Within a fortnight it had 75,000 users; by January 2012, there were 42m blogs on the site; today, there are about 110m, and the investors who have poured $125m into the company include Sir Richard Branson.
With a press conference due on Monday in New York’s Times Square, just a couple of miles from Tumblr’s headquarters, nobody expects Mayer will turn up empty-handed. According to the Wall Street Journal on Sunday evening, the Yahoo board have agreed to pay $1.1bn for Tumblr and will let it continue to operate as an independent business.
What will happen to the Tumblr porn and other content Yahoo! has been known to block on their network, who knows. Get ready for blocked and closed accounts I would say.
