Yahoo’s board has approved a deal to buy New York-based blogging service Tumblr for $1.1bn (£725m), US media reports say.
The acquisition is expected to be announced as early as Monday.
Once more I have done it again; signed up for a service and in a matter of days learn it is to be acquired. I did the precise thing with posterous just before Twitter purchased them and ran it into the ground.
One wonders what Yahoo plans to do with this mini-social network that is weighed down by a lot of adult content that is just very hard to monetize with advertising.
The news is that they are going to continue running it as is, but that is only going to last for so long. I have no doubt that Marissa Mayer has plans for what she is going to be doing with Tumblr.
This acquisition was a little surprise for the industry, as all the buzz has been around the intense talks with Hulu to purchase them for a $1bn. A much more complicated deal as you are really buying all the licensing agreements with the major TV/movie studios.
Is all this consolidation into a handful of big operators (Google, Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft and Amazon) a good thing for us consumers or not?
alan williamson 