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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

#181

Post by dsaint »

fatjokes wrote: post #86
sudonim wrote: post #3

How is this becoming public information so quickly? Is this being leaked? It seems like it's not beneficial for this to become public knowledge for anyone except Tumblr if they are trying to start a bidding war.

I suspect a big part of the reason that Yahoo! makes these acquisitions if for PR, i.e., "look! we're a dynamic company making huge moves!" Look at Summly---how much value did they reap simply from the media coverage? They killed the software immediately, and I'm sure Yahoo! Research could've whipped up a pretty decent summarization engine at no extra cost.

They integrated Summly into their Yahoo iOS app within 30 days of acquisition. They're using it to provide summaries of news articles in the app.

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

#182

Post by orangethirty »

baby wrote: post #179
adventured wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Different? No. Its simply repeating past mistakes. Tumblr makes no financial sense. If they wanted to bring in talent to innovate, they could simply buy fifty bootstrapped startups for 5% of the Tumblr deal. That would net them the people they would have wanted. The only reason Tumblr is being bought is due to how Yahoo is showing off to the market. The CEO is simply trying to position Yahoo as bullish. Wall street will rejoice, their stock goes up (for a short time), and the shareholders rejoice. But this sort of thing does not last a long time.

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

#183

Post by discodave »

smegel wrote: post #176
camus wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Just because social networks are the future doesn't mean Yahoo needs to take on facebook head on (see: Google+).

Plus, Tumblr IS a social network, just not built in the image of facebook. So is instagram, youtube etc.

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

#184

Post by fatjokes »

dsaint wrote: post #181
fatjokes wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect a big part of the reason that Yahoo! makes these acquisitions if for PR, i.e., "look! we're a dynamic company making huge moves!" Look at Summly---how much value did they reap simply from the media coverage? They killed the software immediately, and I'm sure Yahoo! Research could've whipped up a pretty decent summarization engine at no extra cost.

They integrated Summly into their Yahoo iOS app within 30 days of acquisition. They're using it to provide summaries of news articles in the app.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't they integrate "Summly's summarization technology" into their app, which was licensed from SRI?

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

#185

Post by unlogic »

ebf wrote: post #154
blankenship wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does cute factor have to do with anything in this thread? “Ballmer is rotund and intelligent, but what’s his strategy for Microsoft?” sounds just as silly.

Seems like the OP's sentence has a sexist undertone to it.

Because CEO is company's main representative and being charismatic/attractive certainly wouldn't hurt company's image. This applies to both male and female CEOs.

And since when calling a person pretty qualifies as sexism? Or is it the lack of "women in IT" threads lately that makes people throw the S-word around irrelevantly?

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

#186

Post by icebraining »

seiji wrote: post #164
jiggy2011 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no foolproof way to know what will generate value ahead of time. Sometimes in order to use their skills to generate value a developer requires resources ahead of time that only a large company can provide. If you work on a failed project as an employee, then at least you got paid a salary during that time. As a startup founder you walk away with nothing.

As a startup founder you walk away with nothing. That's kinda the problem these days. Failed startups have social connections making founders millionaires even when their venture was worthless. Some startups (not in the tumblr case) are essentially projects where you show the world Hey I Can Do Stuff then you get a few million dollars as a hiring bonus.

Failed startups have social connections making founders millionaires even when their venture was worthless.

They do? Where does all that money come from and why would its owners give it away like that?

Some startups (not in the tumblr case) are essentially projects where you show the world Hey I Can Do Stuff then you get a few million dollars as a hiring bonus.

Yes. And for each, there are a bunch from which the founders walk away with very little.

Maybe instead of assuming the Yahoo! workers are all idiots who are exploited because they're unable to see that they should all be working at startups, you should try to start from the principle that they're not idiots and understand why they don't.

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

#187

Post by damncabbage »

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.

Of a sort. It was rewritten in C++ and Perl (http://people.csail.mit.edu/gregs/ll1-discuss-archive-html/m...), but is still an active product in its new form.

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

#188

Post by LinaLauneBaer »

_ak wrote: post #74
LinaLauneBaer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. It more or less saved Germany from internet censorship. http://www.netzturbine.de/en/internet/zensursula-deutsches-i...

I was actually thinking about petitions about private companies and their business decisions, not politics. If Tumblr or a Yahoo had their own corporate petition platform, then yes, but comparing a petition on some random website with a petition on the website of the German Bundestag is like comparing apples to orangutans.

Sorry. This was not clear to me. I thought you were talking about any internet petition. :)

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

#189

Post by SZenith »

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…

I sense a theme there: everything they acquired was underwhelming before they acquired it.

Tumblr, on the other hand, has a lot of users that are fully addicted. I can see things turning out differently.

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

#190

Post by baby »

orangethirty wrote: post #182
baby wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Different? No. Its simply repeating past mistakes. Tumblr makes no financial sense. If they wanted to bring in talent to innovate, they could simply buy fifty bootstrapped startups for 5% of the Tumblr deal. That would net them the people they would have wanted. The only reason Tumblr is being bought is due to how Yahoo is showing off to the market. The CEO is simply trying to position Yahoo as bullish. Wall street w…

I think it's not about bringing money to the company, but giving a new image to Yahoo. People are going to associate tumblr, which is something pretty new and cool on the internet, with yahoo. Which is? Maybe a mail? A search engine? Nobody knows anymore.
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