Yahoo 1.1 billion dollars to buy Tumblr crisis and machine

Changing Yahoo from the start of the acquisition, this seems to be the most obvious signal that Mayer has delivered since she became CEO of Yahoo.

Just early this morning, sources said that Yahoo's board has passed the "1.1 billion dollar acquisition platform Tumblr" resolution, if true, it also means that Yahoo in recent years the most blockbuster deal was born. But will this costly shot really make the old internet company, which has developed for nearly 18 years, a new vitality?

The value of Tumblr: a vibrant social platform for young users

Just last week, Yahoo's CFO, Ken Goudman, stressed at an industry conference that Yahoo was trying to attract more young users between the ages of 18 and 34 to get the company cool again.

Weigh more than 5 billion of dollars of cash on earnings. Tumblr seems to be the best choice for a start-up that buys the right price, with a handful of loyal young users and an influential platform that Yahoo lacks on social networks.

Founded in 2007, Tumblr as a simple and portable blog platform, the growth performance has been good. In addition to helping users publish text blogs more easily, animated images and GIF formats are also the main content of user production. By building a focus chain, users can see other people's blog updates in their dynamic streams of information. And as the main revenue source of Tumblr ads are also hosted in the dynamic information flow.

The growth rate of Tumblr is astonishing. Relevant data show that in March this year, Tumblr's monthly active users of about 117 million, the same period last year only 58 million. Mobile-phone users compared to 4 million last year, has now reached 12 million. In March this year, Tumblr's blog number exceeded 100 million, with a total of more than 44.6 billion posts. Last year tumblr revenue reached $13 million trillion, and this year's target is expected to exceed 100 million dollars.

However, although Tumblr has good product performance, as a social platform, commercial capacity is still the biggest threshold for products.

In addition, in 2011, Tumblr financed $85 million in a 800 million dollar valuation. Foreign media said the company would not be able to complete a new round of financing will face the risk of a shortage of funds. Meanwhile, TUMBLR CEO David Kap (David Karp), who has been trying to find someone like Facebook COO Sandberg, has never been able to achieve it. Therefore, for Tumblr, 1.1 billion dollars sold to Yahoo is not a good destination.

User dissatisfaction Yahoo will also screw up a product?

In the case of the takeover, there are different views from all sectors of the technology community. Some entrepreneurs believe that, according to Yahoo's current development, the acquisition of 10 Tumblr is not excessive.

Look at a series of successful or almost successful acquisitions by big companies: Google bought YouTube in 2006 with $1.65 billion trillion, and if YouTube is currently on its own, it may be valued at $50 billion trillion, with Google buying Android in 2005 with $50 million. At present, the number of devices that carry the system has reached 900 million; Yahoo, which wanted to buy Facebook at $900 million in 2006, now has a market capitalisation of more than $60 billion trillion; Google, which has been trying to buy Yelp with 550 million dollars, now has a market capitalisation of more than 2 billion dollars.

So will Yahoo's takeover of Tumblr, like the case above, create another miracle of achievement? People who are not optimistic also have their own basis.

Looking back at Yahoo once a series of acquisitions, many promising innovative products are simply smashed in the hands of the veteran company: in 2005, Yahoo to 35 million U.S. dollars to acquire the company's platform Flickr, the original development potential of the product has already lost its due luster; The acquisition of MyBlogLog and upcoming was closed after a 10 million-dollar acquisition of content-sharing services delicious, six years later, when the technology was sold at the bottom of Yahoo's price.

When Flickr was sold to Yahoo, users angrily threatened to call off the account if Flickr was sold. Now, eight years later, this scene was born to Tumblr users. According to foreign media reports, some users have begun to protest against their future production of content will become Yahoo's assets.

Young users of Yahoo's Tumblr is becoming Yahoo after the acquisition of the first problem faced. What kind of practical action does Yahoo need to demonstrate to its users the ability to operate on innovative products? Can Yahoo really turn Tumblr users into Yahoo users? The problem may be trickier than asking the board to adopt a takeover decision.

In addition, the Tumblr of such a slow-heat social platform can give back to Yahoo. The real benefits are still an unanswered answer. From the commercial ability, although the creation of advertising revenue is Yahoo's strong points, but whether Yahoo can help Tumblr to complete the commercialization of the leap is not a clear direction. Especially to take into account the Tumblr user activity began to decline in the reality. As a result, buying advertising-driven social products is at least 10 times times more risky than buying those paid-for products.

Of course, the large number of pornographic images emerging on the Tumblr will be difficult for Yahoo to deal with. After all, these pictures play an important role in driving the flow of Tumblr. And Yahoo's latitude for pornography is stricter than Tumblr.

Yahoo Transformation: Is the acquisition really a good way?

The acquisition of Meyer as Yahoo CEO has involved not less than 10 companies. So some media commented that those who could not find a round of financing of the start-up companies finally have a new home, it is sold to Yahoo.

Listed companies include: Social sharing application stamped, video chat platform on the Air, content sharing tools snip.it, mobile referral engine Alik and Jybe, news content streamlining tools Summly, social task management platform Astrid, Travel incentive Tools Milewise, election products Gopollgo and a French video website Dailymotion, which was supposed to have been bought and blocked for policy reasons.

The amount of these products is not very high, after all, they are not unique in their respective areas, and most of them just get seed round financing. After being acquired, these products are all faced with the fate of being shut down.

What is Yahoo's value for them? The most direct answer: personalized content and the resulting personalized advertising revenue.

When Yahoo buys 30 million dollars for news-reading apps summly less than one months, the new Yahoo News app creates personalized news streams by accessing Summly's content extraction technology.

Only when the user is exposed to the content of the user is really like and willing to interact with it, the product's active degree and stickiness can be promoted. Yahoo needs such products and technologies that could really change the way Yahoo's rigid content is produced and displayed.

But can this goal really be done through acquisitions? From a limited time perspective, the benefits of these acquisitions are not obvious. Not even hear the user's identity.

Seven years ago, 900 million dollars to buy Facebook, Yahoo failed. Now, 1.1 billion of dollars down, Tumblr can bring to Yahoo what?