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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

#171

Post by ensignavenger »

gnok wrote: post #95
zaidf wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is a genius at acquisitions IMO. To qualify as a genius you don't need a 100% of acquisitions to work out. You do need a few to work out tremendously. Google has those. Meanwhile, what's the last yahoo acquisition that didn't turn into disappointment soon after the acquisition? We can go back 15 years and be hard-pressed to find one. On the other hand there are plenty of disaster acquisitions including broadca…

I don't mean to imply that Yahoo is more successful than Google at acquisitions (We know that isn't the case). I just don't think Google is a good benchmark for acquisitions. I think they as good or as bad as Yahoo. I think Yahoo's problem with acquisitions has been that they are moderately successful initially and then drift away over time. ViaWeb, GeoCities, Musicmatch Jukebox, Konfabulator, delicious and Ludicorp…

ViaWeb was re-branded Yahoo Stores, and is still alive and, presumably, healthy.

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

#172

Post by patrickaljord »

Zigurd wrote: post #110
patrickaljord wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is just getting started with Motorola so it's too soon to tell and I'm pretty sure that Blogger has been a huge success (through adsense) and many successful blogs uses it. It went down though since Facebook and Twitter for obvious reasons but the same thing happened to most blogging platforms.

Google needs to be finished with Motorola. "Just getting started" is what you hear from Nokia. That's not a good sound.

Motorola is a hardware company. it takes much longer to fix a hardware company. Do you think it took 12 months for Steve Jobs to fix Apple when he came back? Come on.

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

#173

Post by gummydude »

Zigurd wrote: post #109
gnok wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. We don't know what Yahoo wants to do with Tumblr. All we have are rumors, a WSJ report and tons of idle speculation. Without knowing what the intended end game is, I don't see how we can call the acquisition a "success" or "failure", much less the CEO's. I also don't agree that "a sign of progress" is "making it succeed in the long run". Google is no genius with large acquisitions either. Motorola and Blo…

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 X-Phone

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

#174

Post by fuci »

ensignavenger wrote: post #171
gnok wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean to imply that Yahoo is more successful than Google at acquisitions (We know that isn't the case). I just don't think Google is a good benchmark for acquisitions. I think they as good or as bad as Yahoo. I think Yahoo's problem with acquisitions has been that they are moderately successful initially and then drift away over time. ViaWeb, GeoCities, Musicmatch Jukebox, Konfabulator, delicious and Ludicorp…

ViaWeb was re-branded Yahoo Stores, and is still alive and, presumably, healthy.

Even GeoCities is actually still around in the form of Yahoo! Small Business. At least from a technology perspective.

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

#175

Post by DigitalSea »

I still think this is a bad acquisition. I mean don't get me wrong, Tumblr has potential to be something great but at present it feels like a more modernised version of Geocities complete lots of animated GIF's, memes and soft pornography. It's definitely not worth $1.1B (but what do I know?).

They have the traffic, but it won't be easy to monetise. It might be good for Yahoo! to tackle a large challenge and let Meyer truly show them she has the moxie to turn the fledging company around.

Considering Yahoo! have a nice cache of PHP based websites, it makes sense the purchase of Tumblr is as much as a talent hire as it is an acquisition of a high-trafficked website with potential. Will be keeping an eye on this, if and when Yahoo! buy Tumblr. The deal isn't even concrete yet, but it's still highly likely given Tumblr has months left to choose a buyer and finalise a deal.

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

#176

Post by smegel »

camus wrote: post #142
smegel wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They need a social network. Badly. All their other services, including email, belong to a bygone era (with the exception of acquisitions like Flickr).

Who do they need a social network ? are people going to move from Facebook or Twitter to Tumblr? No. They need a good an new idea , an innovative product that will draw attention. and a consistent strategy . People are fed up with social networks ( i.e. Google+ ). Tumblr is not valuable at all for advertisers , unless you are selling porn... What's Yahoo mobile strategy ? What's Yahoo's cloud strategy ? ect ... I see…

Because I think social networks are the future, they will be to future generations what the world wide web has been up until today. Ignoring social networks today would be like ignoring the www in the mid 90s (aol online, msn).

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

#177

Post by mortehu »

6d0debc071 wrote: post #128
steven2012 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? :/

For a small enough company; because it might be bought. For example, Activision Blizzard might be bought fully by Vivendi.

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

#179

Post by baby »

adventured wrote: post #162
tnuc wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are describing sounds like what happened to GeoCities.

Tumblr is GeoCities, circa 2010. And that's why Yahoo purchased them of course. Nothing has changed about the nature of what Yahoo is. The only thing Mayer is doing is collecting a new group of properties to replace the stagnant old ones. It's not brilliant and it won't get the earnings flowing.

While I do agree that Tumblr is the new Geocities. I think you're wrong when you say it's not a good idea buying it. Yahoo is building something very different from Google and Bing by buying tumblr.

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

#180

Post by ceejayoz »

icebraining wrote: post #123
alan_cx wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If the beef isn't beef, you can't really count on any of the other food integrity items - like freshness - to be accurate either.

Horse meat's fine, I've had it... but it's unacceptable and potentially dangerous to have it sold as beef.

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