Yahoo to Acquire Tumblr • Hacker News Board

Re: Yahoo to Acquire Tumblr

#21

Post by Swizec » Mon, May 20, 2013, 12:42 PM UTC

btipling wrote: post #14

Maybe this could have been Posterous had they won that battle with Tumblr. Posterous had the superior product early on, but for some reason it never caught on. I wonder how that works, who wins for what reasons. It does not seem to be for product or technology reasons as I think Posterous had Tumblr beat. It's almost luck and magic who picks up the right kind of early users that lead to success. Admittedly it did see…

Porn. Tumblr has porn.

As always, when two technologies are battling, the one porn picks will win.

Re: Yahoo to Acquire Tumblr

#22

Post by quarterto » Mon, May 20, 2013, 12:42 PM UTC

venomsnake wrote: post #18

jordn wrote: post #5

I do like how this article from yahoo finance has this heading and subheading: Yahoo! to Acquire Tumblr Promises not to screw it up Fair enough. That probably is most people's biggest concern and expectation of what Yahoo will do.

Does yahoo have a good track record of acquiring services and not frakking them up? Not a troll question, I stopped using yahoo in 1999 but for the occasional openid.

They didn't screw up Flickr. Then again, they didn't do anything with Flickr.

Re: Yahoo to Acquire Tumblr

#23

Post by wslh » Mon, May 20, 2013, 12:42 PM UTC

mysterywhiteboy wrote: post #10

I don't work for Yahoo, but I must say I would seriously consider working there now with Marissa Mayer at the helm. Mayer appears to be doing everything she can to drag Yahoo back to being relevant, and to me that sounds like an interesting (and potentially rewarding) challenge. I just hope she is looking for innovation from within as well as from acquisitions.

It is to early to speak about the future success of Yahoo.

Re: Yahoo to Acquire Tumblr

#24

Post by venomsnake » Mon, May 20, 2013, 12:43 PM UTC

camus wrote: post #16

mysterywhiteboy wrote: post #10

I don't work for Yahoo, but I must say I would seriously consider working there now with Marissa Mayer at the helm. Mayer appears to be doing everything she can to drag Yahoo back to being relevant, and to me that sounds like an interesting (and potentially rewarding) challenge. I just hope she is looking for innovation from within as well as from acquisitions.

On the contrary i would seriously consider getting another job because i would feel like the management is totally broken. Yahoo is not going to be relevant again because they bought Tumblr. They cant even make their own product relevant. I cant even understand why anybody would buy Tumblr 1 billion or more. Dailymotion would have been a good deal, this service is relevant and people are starting to be willing to pay…

Well yahoo has things to offer to the tumblr team - a lot of technical and scalability know how. I won't be surprised if they are able to shave operating costs a lot and utilize better the labor force.

The problem is that the valuable asset of tumblr are its users. And users are fickle bunch.

Re: Yahoo to Acquire Tumblr

#25

Post by citricsquid » Mon, May 20, 2013, 12:43 PM UTC

btipling wrote: post #14

Maybe this could have been Posterous had they won that battle with Tumblr. Posterous had the superior product early on, but for some reason it never caught on. I wonder how that works, who wins for what reasons. It does not seem to be for product or technology reasons as I think Posterous had Tumblr beat. It's almost luck and magic who picks up the right kind of early users that lead to success. Admittedly it did see…

Tumblr is not a blogging platform, it is a social network. Tumblr revolves around the dashboard, it's much more Twitter than it is Wordpress.

Re: Yahoo to Acquire Tumblr

#26

Post by pavs » Mon, May 20, 2013, 12:43 PM UTC

btipling wrote: post #14

Maybe this could have been Posterous had they won that battle with Tumblr. Posterous had the superior product early on, but for some reason it never caught on. I wonder how that works, who wins for what reasons. It does not seem to be for product or technology reasons as I think Posterous had Tumblr beat. It's almost luck and magic who picks up the right kind of early users that lead to success. Admittedly it did see…

I had the exact opposite opinion about posterous. I thought it was mainly built on hype and was quite popular inside eco chambers like HN community. There was very little if any user fueled, word-of-mouth growth. Also had had very little traffic when you compare it to tumblr.

Re: Yahoo to Acquire Tumblr

#27

Post by freehunter » Mon, May 20, 2013, 12:45 PM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #21

btipling wrote: post #14

Maybe this could have been Posterous had they won that battle with Tumblr. Posterous had the superior product early on, but for some reason it never caught on. I wonder how that works, who wins for what reasons. It does not seem to be for product or technology reasons as I think Posterous had Tumblr beat. It's almost luck and magic who picks up the right kind of early users that lead to success. Admittedly it did see…

Porn. Tumblr has porn. As always, when two technologies are battling, the one porn picks will win.

Except HD-DVD. In that battle, it was the one who had a video game console backing the standard versus the one with porn but a console maker only paying lip service to the technology.

Re: Yahoo to Acquire Tumblr

#28

Post by pavs » Mon, May 20, 2013, 12:45 PM UTC

venomsnake wrote: post #18

jordn wrote: post #5

I do like how this article from yahoo finance has this heading and subheading: Yahoo! to Acquire Tumblr Promises not to screw it up Fair enough. That probably is most people's biggest concern and expectation of what Yahoo will do.

Does yahoo have a good track record of acquiring services and not frakking them up? Not a troll question, I stopped using yahoo in 1999 but for the occasional openid.

I don't think its fair to compare Yahoo! under different CEO. They all had different goals and roadmap. The current Yahoo seems to be going towards another direction than its immediate predecessors.

Re: Yahoo to Acquire Tumblr

#29

Post by marckremers » Mon, May 20, 2013, 12:45 PM UTC

btipling wrote: post #14

Maybe this could have been Posterous had they won that battle with Tumblr. Posterous had the superior product early on, but for some reason it never caught on. I wonder how that works, who wins for what reasons. It does not seem to be for product or technology reasons as I think Posterous had Tumblr beat. It's almost luck and magic who picks up the right kind of early users that lead to success. Admittedly it did see…

Disagree, Tumblr won because it of it's underlying attitude and commitment to creativity. Posterous never had that edge to it. I engaged with both platforms, and Tumblr, quite simply, felt cooler and fresher.

Re: Yahoo to Acquire Tumblr

#30

Post by Mahn » Mon, May 20, 2013, 12:45 PM UTC

btipling wrote: post #14

Maybe this could have been Posterous had they won that battle with Tumblr. Posterous had the superior product early on, but for some reason it never caught on. I wonder how that works, who wins for what reasons. It does not seem to be for product or technology reasons as I think Posterous had Tumblr beat. It's almost luck and magic who picks up the right kind of early users that lead to success. Admittedly it did see…

There's always a bit of luck involved in these things that escapes reason. I seem to recall that at some point the landing page of Posterous was considerably more cluttered than the LP of Tumblr, and that kinda gave me the impression Tumblr was the simpler product, but I never really used either of them.