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The Yahoo board has approved a deal to pay $1.1 billion in cash for Tumblr

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Re: The Yahoo board has approved a deal to pay $1.1 billion in cash for Tumblr

#121

A business without a proper model, lack of revenue, losing money, fighting off pornography and spammers is worth 1.1 billion in cash to Yahoo. The users will flee, they always do. The engineering dept. will be hired out, it always is. All that Yahoo will have is a domain, a database filled with cats and naked people, and a real problem on its hands. Bad move, Yahoo. The way to re-build Yahoo is not to buy zombie busi…

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Re: The Yahoo board has approved a deal to pay $1.1 billion in cash for Tumblr

#122

A business without a proper model, lack of revenue, losing money, fighting off pornography and spammers is worth 1.1 billion in cash to Yahoo. The users will flee, they always do. The engineering dept. will be hired out, it always is. All that Yahoo will have is a domain, a database filled with cats and naked people, and a real problem on its hands. Bad move, Yahoo. The way to re-build Yahoo is not to buy zombie busi…

As always? is this the rule? Given precedents of instagram etc, it doesn't seem like an improbable price.

However, how is tumblr fighting porn? I thought they actively encouraged it. It's a big part of tumblr for sure (and big part of the value yahoo pays for).

Re: The Yahoo board has approved a deal to pay $1.1 billion in cash for Tumblr

#123
post #71
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you and Marissa Mayer want the last burger in the world, how much is it worth? What if you're Mark Zuckerberg, and it's really important to her that you don't get a taste of that burger? Maybe she doesn't even like burgers. Factors like the cost of the burger, or how fresh/tasty it is, become less important. Also, all-cash doesn't mean what you think it means. The currency used to pay for a company (cash, stock, p…

Well, if you are British, you'd want to check that burger doesn't contain horse meat. And as amusing as that might or might not be, there is also a point there.

There's nothing wrong with horse meat.

Re: The Yahoo board has approved a deal to pay $1.1 billion in cash for Tumblr

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It needs an overhaul, but it does what I need, which is share a few hundred images, broken up into sets. I've tried a couple other sites and apps, and haven't switched yet.

It does what everybody needs at this point but people have drifted towards services like Instagram because it is so well thought out and easy to use. In a lot of ways most people are looking for what Flickr offers but refuse to use it. They want privacy, a place to back up their full-resolution smartphone photos and for a very cheap price.

Do professional photographers use Instagram? That's Flickr's bread and butter.

Re: The Yahoo board has approved a deal to pay $1.1 billion in cash for Tumblr

#125
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Motorola stands out as a clunker. It is very expensive, even for Google. It is a distraction for management. It is a threat to Google's culture. It fails to be a stick to beat patent trolls. It has all the problems of an underperforming mobile OEM, while breeding doubt among Google's important partners. And all these criticisms were leveled by many people before Google bought Motorola. Some things really are plain to…

> Motorola stands out as a clunker. When Google bought Motorola, the reasoning I read was all about patents. They still have those patents, and it might have been a good acquisition no matter the state of Motorola the company...

And hey look, a coincidence: Google has been getting more and more into hardware since then.

Re: The Yahoo board has approved a deal to pay $1.1 billion in cash for Tumblr

#126
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the overall UX has needed updating for quite some time, but I also imagine their paying customers (photo nuts) are some of the pickier users out there. I wouldn't be surprised if the best course for Flickr is to be as conservative with changes as possible.

Even if it's the best course, it might still wreck on the coral reef cruft of dead accounts and abandoned groups. Flickr has been in decline for a while. I doubt incremental changes could bring it back.

dead accounts and abandoned groups don't pay for their accounts. those who do pay are the picky users.

Re: The Yahoo board has approved a deal to pay $1.1 billion in cash for Tumblr

#127

A business without a proper model, lack of revenue, losing money, fighting off pornography and spammers is worth 1.1 billion in cash to Yahoo. The users will flee, they always do. The engineering dept. will be hired out, it always is. All that Yahoo will have is a domain, a database filled with cats and naked people, and a real problem on its hands. Bad move, Yahoo. The way to re-build Yahoo is not to buy zombie busi…

Yeah, we've all seen this story played out many times. It's a move that's good for the short term but terrible for the long term.

Re: The Yahoo board has approved a deal to pay $1.1 billion in cash for Tumblr

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This doesn't make sense. Which CEO doesn't believe that their stock won't go up in 3 years? If they don't believe it, they should be fired." This is clearly untrue. Which moron CEO at the head of a newspaper anticipates anything more than a very modest increase in their stock over the next few years? Most newspapers are very much aware of their problems. Do you think a CEOs job is to bury their head in the sand and…

A CEO's job is to increase shareholder value. End of story. This means increasing the stock price. So yes, I do believe that this statement is absolutely true. The CEO needs to figure out a way to increase shareholder value, whether they are Yahoo, or Washington Post, or New York Times, or Groupon. They are not supposed to sit around and maintain dividends. Whether it's breaking into new businesses, selling their cur…

If you knew that stock was never going to pay dividends, then why would anyone ever want it? :/

Re: The Yahoo board has approved a deal to pay $1.1 billion in cash for Tumblr

#129

This is great news for the NYC startup ecosystem, which had been lacking in the billion dollar exits that create the next generation of entrepreneur-investors.

The Double Click acquisition spawned a ton of investment and led to companies like Gilt and 10gen. It will be interesting to see what Marco Arment does with a cool $100 million or so. He seems to have a golden touch. Tumblr, Instapaper, and The Magazine makes him 3 for 3.

Re: The Yahoo board has approved a deal to pay $1.1 billion in cash for Tumblr

#130
post #101

How does it feel to work at a company when it pays over a billion dollars to 20-somethings working on the opposite coast? It's not mentally reconcilable. The only way not to go crazy is if you don't think about it at all, but that's just denying the reality of you being exploited while getting few of the benefits. Some people say, "Well, I have 'job security!'" Is "job security," the greatest corporate-serving propag…

Frankly, I don't get your position.

If you believe that price should be determined by supply and demand based on perceived value, like it mostly is in these cases, then there's no exploitation.

If you believe that price should be attributed based on Labor expended, then the Yahoo! workers are already extremely disproportionately paid relative to the average worker, so it makes no sense for them to feel exploited.

How exactly are the Yahoo! workers exploited?

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