GLOBAL, 20 MAY, 2013 – Yesterday the board of search pioneer Yahoo agreed to purchase the blogging service Tumblr for approximately US$1.1bn in cash – more than Facebook’s purchase of Instagram for US$1bn in 2012.
This is the seventh such acquisition to take place under the aegis of Marissa Meyer, the onetime Google executive who took over Yahoo in July 2012. Meyer is struggling to revitalize Yahoo, and this latest deal is intended to do so by increasing the company’s appeal to younger netizens.
Over 108 million blogs, many of which are actively updated, are hosted on Tumblr. The six-year-old service, one of the most active social networks in existence nowadays, is one of the most successful of its kind, boasting a reach of approximately 134 million around the world. However, Tumblr only started hosting ads last May, and despite being the 24th most frequently viewed Internet site today by media measurement service Quantcast, it has yet to gain similar acceptance among those using mobile devices.
