Fans of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer say she shouldn’t be blamed for the company’s history of failed acquisitions — but there are plenty of other reasons to be skeptical about Yahoo’s $1.1-billion Tumblr deal. Read more at GigaOM »
More news from Yahoo on Monday: The company is revamping photo-sharing service Flickr and is also opening a New York City office. Tumblr’s employees, however, will remain at their current office. Read more at GigaOM »
There are plenty of reasons why the announced Yahoo Tumblr deal makes sense for those companies. But Marissa Mayer might have seen a much greater payoff from acquiring Pinterest instead. Here’s why. Read more at GigaOM »
In an investor call Monday morning, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said Yahoo and Tumblr’s audiences really don’t overlap. She said that’s fine: Yahoo users will be exposed to more Tumblr content, and Tumblr gets a new ad strategy and possible Flickr integration while remaining a separate site. Read more at GigaOM »
Yahoo has officially acquired Tumblr for $1.1 billion, the companies announced Monday morning. Tumblr will be operated as a separate business, with David Karp remaining CEO. Read more at GigaOM »
Fans of the social-blogging network might not like the idea much, but a $1-billion acquisition of Tumblr would arguably solve a number of problems for Yahoo — and do the same for Tumblr CEO David Karp. Read more at GigaOM »
Tumblr might become part of Yahoo as early as Sunday night, according to a report that suggests Yahoo’s board of directors is set to consider a $1.1 billion offer for the startup. Read more at GigaOM »
At our paidContent Live conference in New York, we heard about the disruption in publishing, journalism and advertising from speakers such as Alan Rusbridger of The Guardian, Jon Steinberg of BuzzFeed and blogger Andrew Sullivan. Read more »
Looking to find the best blog posts on Tumblr? The company isn’t interested in telling you which blogs are the best, but it does want to improve the overall discovery process — and help the best bloggers find financial success. Read more »
Although its Storyboard editorial operation won awards for the content it curated from the Tumblr network, founder and CEO David Karp said Tuesday the unit is being shut down and all the editorial staff are being let go. Read more »
Flipboard has become a leading player in the digital news-consumption field, and now it wants to hand the same filtering and curation tools employed by its editors over to users of the app, to create their own magazines. Read more at GigaOM »
The media outlets apart from bringing readers news and information now have to embrace a new role: become amplifiers of the right kind of news including that directly shared by sources. Here is why I think so. Read more at GigaOM »
The comments you leave on a website — are they garbage or a gold mine? Disqus says comments are more popular than you might think and has big plans to make money off them. Read more »
Reddit, the online community that gained fame last year for a Q&A with President Obama, is said to be raising venture funding that could value the company at $400 million — and would give it ammunition to compete with other new-media players such as BuzzFeed and Tumblr. Read more »
BuzzFeed has built the site from just a repository for animated cat GIFs into a substantial media entity, and just raised a new round of financing — and Tumblr also has a fairly deep war-chest and dreams of expansion. And both are aiming at the same targets. Read more »
Israel is waging war on Hamas, but it is also waging an information war using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other tools. How firmly do these networks support the principle of free speech, and how do they decide what content to permit and what to remove? Read more at GigaOM »
Here are my notes from a conversation with David Karp, CEO & Founder of Tumblr. He talks about the social web, Tumblr’s place in this new Internet, the shift to mobile, the iPad Mini and how he has changed as a founder and entrepreneur. Read more at GigaOM »
The popularity of image sites like Instagram and Pinterest means more photo sharing — but also more copyright infringement. If we’re to avoid the bitter experience of the music industry, image owners should look to Dreamstime’s example of turning infringers into customers. Read more »
Many startups like Tumblr and Airbnb have become successful because they focused on filling a need that their founders had, and then turned that into a business, and there are a number of important lessons in that kind of approach for traditional media companies. Read more at GigaOM »
Tumblr is enjoying explosive traffic growth and jaw-dropping valuations. But so did a similar community site, GeoCities, a decade ago before it quickly imploded. Investor Fred Wilson says this time is different. Read more at GigaOM »
Any web service that is growing as quickly as Tumblr is should be of interest to Facebook — but especially one that focuses on creating and sharing viral social content, and one that is appealing to growing numbers of young users. Read more at GigaOM »
Just as Tumblr seems to be trying to imitate a mainstream media entity by hiring bloggers to cover political conventions, traditional media outlets are trying to become more Tumblr-like by adopting animated GIFs and other tools as a way of making their content more viral. Read more at GigaOM »
Announcing our initial speaker lineup for our 2nd RoadMap conference! Our focus this year: design in the age of connectedness. It is scheduled for Nov. 5th in SF. Some of our speakers include Kevin Systrom, Evan Williams, David Karp, Tony Fadell, Yves Behar and more. Read more at GigaOM »
Twitter’s ongoing moves to control more of its network — in order to monetize it — is an attempt to turn back the clock and undo some of the openness it started out with. But will it also rob the service of what made it so powerful? Read more at GigaOM »
In an interview at paidContent 2012 in New York, venture capitalist Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures said he has stayed away from media investments, and believes that the future for content providers lies in connecting directly with consumers through platforms like Kickstarter. Read more at GigaOM »
Is the web run by large corporations, or is it powered primarily by peer-to-peer networks? That’s the question behind one of the longest-running wagers of the modern web era — a six-year-old bet between author and web sceptic Nick Carr and Harvard professor Yochai Benkler. Read more at GigaOM »
It’s finally happened. In a case with big implications for the booming market in photo-sharing, a publisher is suing popular blogging site Tumblr for copyright infringement. Read more »
Tumblr is finally ready to start opening the doors to brands and will begin with a new tool for placing branded Tumblr posts into its Radar feature starting May 2, said Tumblr founder David Karp, speaking at the Ad Age Digital Conference. Read more at GigaOM »
Tumblr CEO David Karp said the company is looking to make its mark by enabling creators to express themselves. It’s also in a bid to start monetizing the service. But Karp believes these two goals can converge, with Tumblr making money by empowering creators. Read more at GigaOM »
Tumblr, which has become a favorite blogging tool for hip consumers and wannabe-hip media companies, has raised $30 million in a new funding… Read more »
If blogs are over, tumblelogs never even got going. But that isn’t stopping Tumblr, short-form scrapbook blogging’s biggest exponent, from r… Read more »