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If the deal goes through Yahoo would now own the Tumblr audience, so Yahoo would have a product with a young audience, the audience Marissa Mayer wants for Yaho

If the deal goes through Yahoo would now own the Tumblr audience, so Yahoo would have a product with a young audience, the audience Marissa Mayer wants for Yahoo, however, how would they move that audience over to other Yahoo products? An acquisition of Tumblr seems very much like the acquisition of reddit by Advance Publications. They both have huge audiences that are passionate and growing fast but have great difficulty monetising their audiences effectively and are providing no real value to the parent company (other than the potential for the sites to become profitable). If Yahoo bought Tumblr how would they ever convert the audience into Yahoo users? I guess it comes down to: what value is there to any company in "owning" an audience if that audience has no interest in becoming the audience of the parent and will actively resist it? People would get very angry if AP started pushing their ownership of reddit onto reddit users, having Wired articles automatically frontpaged, things like that would drive everyone away, how will Yahoo avoid that?

hkmurakami 13y ago
you've just described Facebook for me (relative to the services fb wants me to use)
mbell 13y ago
I think the (possible) acquisition means a lot more for Yahoo's ability to attract talent than it does for the business bottom line. Probably the same thing, but only in the longer term. If they acquire tumblr and shut it down, or make changes that result in a receding of the user base, then they are unlikely to acquire talent. If they acquire tumblr and improve it, they will improve they position in the talent acquisition market.
- hkmurakami 13y ago
  even better would be to keep tumblr a separate entity like slideshare and LinkedIn and really sell that fact to recruits. slide share stresses their small company dynamic +big company resources, and I think that's an attractive proposition for many.
  - w1ntermute 13y ago
    But is it more cost-effective to use Tumblr for signaling for HR purposes, or to just pay the recruits more to get them anyway?
    - hkmurakami 13y ago
      I'd hypothesize that Yahoo can (potentially) get hires who they wouldn't have been able to hire with just money by having a different value proposition subset through Tumblr.
      - w1ntermute 13y ago
        Will those hires really be that good if they don't see through the fact that Yahoo is simply using Tumblr for signaling and isn't actually integrating it into their core business? And if Yahoo does integrate Tumblr, they'll probably destroy their investment. That puts them between a rock and a hard place. If HN is any indicator, the tech industry can already see that Marissa Mayer is just trying to use all these acquisitions to make Yahoo look hip agian. I, for one, am not falling for that crap. I want to see some real innovative shit coming out of Yahoo before I change my (decidedly negative) opinion of them.
- jcampbell1 13y ago
  I think it would be smart for Yahoo to do things to attract talent, but Tumblr is probably the wrong company. Tumblr is adored by people with zero tech talent and is based in New York* . That being said, your comment has made me conflicted. MM has made a ton of insane acquisitions, but the net result is that I would actually now consider Yahoo as an employer. I suppose a series of decisions that I find stupid leading to a positive impression of Yahoo is simply cognitive dissonance that I must live with. * I live in New York, thus don't mean this as slight.
  - yuhong 13y ago
    The acquisitions are not the only thing Marissa did.
    - jcampbell1 13y ago
      That is cryptic. What else are your referring to? Dismissing the remote employees, or free lunches, or something else?
      - yuhong 13y ago
        The free lunches, no longer requiring BlackBerries, and other things Marissa did to change the culture.
        jcampbell1 13y ago
        > other things Marissa did to change the culture. equally cryptic. Care to explain further? I am curious.
        mtrimpe 13y ago
        Not cryptic but vague, which I can imagine if he's an employee. If yuhong is indeed a Yahoo employee and could give an inside view in the changes Marissa is making, I'd love to read a blog post with more details on that. If he can make Marissa sign off on it, that would bode even better for Yahoo as an employer.
sdoowpilihp 13y ago
Bringing the audience over would certainly be a Herculean effort of integrating existing services. As an example Google plus has been integrated into nearly every facet of googles offerings. Yahoo will need to do the same with tumblr, and all of their products, in order to compete. People expect their experience across a companies various products to be seamless now days.
- hkmurakami 13y ago
  a lot of people have commented that integrating g+ into reader could have worked quite nicely. maybe there's a way to integrate yahoo services with tumble in that kind of symbiotic, natural way without disrupting this existing feel and workflow/user-experience of tumblr.
jerf 13y ago
"how would they move that audience over to other Yahoo products?" The way the article is phrased (though we must remember it's third-hand at best) leads me to believe the strategy may be to go the other direction, to meld core Yahoo strengths (whatever that may be) into Tumblr. That is, integrate Yahoo offerings into Tumblr rather than the other way around.
- hkmurakami 13y ago
  how to do this without wrecking the tumble user experience is a huge challenge. One of the great things about tumblr timelines is information purity (and great curation by its users). iirc yahoo's strongest services are sports, news, finance, and mail. these would all seem to disrupt the feel and information purity of tumble if done carelessly. maybe encouraging sharing/linking and extrapolating on yahoo assets by means of great tumble integration into yahoo services and vice versa could benefit both yahoo and tumblr users?
  - rhizome 13y ago
    Would you say you've noticed how the YouTube user experience has changed over the past five years? I don't mean whether you like it personally or not, but whether the overall YT-as-site UX has been ruined in their acquisition by Google. I think we're all inured a bit to site shutdowns through acquisitions, meaning that acq's have taken on a largely negative set of assumptions, but it doesn't have to be that way.
    - hkmurakami 13y ago
      First, I would posit that Google+ encroaching into Youtube has been a negative development. You say that "it doesn't have to be that way" w.r.t. acquisitions having a negative impact on an acquired service, and I agree that in theory, there really is no way the product has to be damaged. But there are agendas and incentives, and more often than not, we have seen first hand that the acquired products do get damaged. Maybe we can get lucky at times like Youtube, but our scar tissue didn't form from nothing.
    - 13y ago
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oakaz 13y ago
You knew Yahoo owns Flickr, right? Flickr has much more power than Tumblr. And they just maintain it for 6 years with same design with ugly looking arrows that used to look nice like 10 years ago. I don't think Yahoo has a good vibe. They just buy and kill. Flickr is the only one that could survive, which can't be considered as success.

hkmurakami 13y ago

you've just described Facebook for me (relative to the services fb wants me to use)

mbell 13y ago

I think the (possible) acquisition means a lot more for Yahoo's ability to attract talent than it does for the business bottom line. Probably the same thing, but only in the longer term. If they acquire tumblr and shut it down, or make changes that result in a receding of the user base, then they are unlikely to acquire talent. If they acquire tumblr and improve it, they will improve they position in the talent acquisition market.

hkmurakami 13y ago
even better would be to keep tumblr a separate entity like slideshare and LinkedIn and really sell that fact to recruits. slide share stresses their small company dynamic +big company resources, and I think that's an attractive proposition for many.
- w1ntermute 13y ago
  But is it more cost-effective to use Tumblr for signaling for HR purposes, or to just pay the recruits more to get them anyway?
  - hkmurakami 13y ago
    I'd hypothesize that Yahoo can (potentially) get hires who they wouldn't have been able to hire with just money by having a different value proposition subset through Tumblr.
    - w1ntermute 13y ago
      Will those hires really be that good if they don't see through the fact that Yahoo is simply using Tumblr for signaling and isn't actually integrating it into their core business? And if Yahoo does integrate Tumblr, they'll probably destroy their investment. That puts them between a rock and a hard place. If HN is any indicator, the tech industry can already see that Marissa Mayer is just trying to use all these acquisitions to make Yahoo look hip agian. I, for one, am not falling for that crap. I want to see some real innovative shit coming out of Yahoo before I change my (decidedly negative) opinion of them.
jcampbell1 13y ago
I think it would be smart for Yahoo to do things to attract talent, but Tumblr is probably the wrong company. Tumblr is adored by people with zero tech talent and is based in New York* . That being said, your comment has made me conflicted. MM has made a ton of insane acquisitions, but the net result is that I would actually now consider Yahoo as an employer. I suppose a series of decisions that I find stupid leading to a positive impression of Yahoo is simply cognitive dissonance that I must live with. * I live in New York, thus don't mean this as slight.
- yuhong 13y ago
  The acquisitions are not the only thing Marissa did.
  - jcampbell1 13y ago
    That is cryptic. What else are your referring to? Dismissing the remote employees, or free lunches, or something else?
    - yuhong 13y ago
      The free lunches, no longer requiring BlackBerries, and other things Marissa did to change the culture.
      - jcampbell1 13y ago
        > other things Marissa did to change the culture. equally cryptic. Care to explain further? I am curious.
        mtrimpe 13y ago
        Not cryptic but vague, which I can imagine if he's an employee. If yuhong is indeed a Yahoo employee and could give an inside view in the changes Marissa is making, I'd love to read a blog post with more details on that. If he can make Marissa sign off on it, that would bode even better for Yahoo as an employer.

sdoowpilihp 13y ago

Bringing the audience over would certainly be a Herculean effort of integrating existing services. As an example Google plus has been integrated into nearly every facet of googles offerings. Yahoo will need to do the same with tumblr, and all of their products, in order to compete. People expect their experience across a companies various products to be seamless now days.

hkmurakami 13y ago
a lot of people have commented that integrating g+ into reader could have worked quite nicely. maybe there's a way to integrate yahoo services with tumble in that kind of symbiotic, natural way without disrupting this existing feel and workflow/user-experience of tumblr.

jerf 13y ago

"how would they move that audience over to other Yahoo products?" The way the article is phrased (though we must remember it's third-hand at best) leads me to believe the strategy may be to go the other direction, to meld core Yahoo strengths (whatever that may be) into Tumblr. That is, integrate Yahoo offerings into Tumblr rather than the other way around.

hkmurakami 13y ago
how to do this without wrecking the tumble user experience is a huge challenge. One of the great things about tumblr timelines is information purity (and great curation by its users). iirc yahoo's strongest services are sports, news, finance, and mail. these would all seem to disrupt the feel and information purity of tumble if done carelessly. maybe encouraging sharing/linking and extrapolating on yahoo assets by means of great tumble integration into yahoo services and vice versa could benefit both yahoo and tumblr users?
- rhizome 13y ago
  Would you say you've noticed how the YouTube user experience has changed over the past five years? I don't mean whether you like it personally or not, but whether the overall YT-as-site UX has been ruined in their acquisition by Google. I think we're all inured a bit to site shutdowns through acquisitions, meaning that acq's have taken on a largely negative set of assumptions, but it doesn't have to be that way.
  - hkmurakami 13y ago
    First, I would posit that Google+ encroaching into Youtube has been a negative development. You say that "it doesn't have to be that way" w.r.t. acquisitions having a negative impact on an acquired service, and I agree that in theory, there really is no way the product has to be damaged. But there are agendas and incentives, and more often than not, we have seen first hand that the acquired products do get damaged. Maybe we can get lucky at times like Youtube, but our scar tissue didn't form from nothing.
  - 13y ago

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oakaz 13y ago

You knew Yahoo owns Flickr, right? Flickr has much more power than Tumblr. And they just maintain it for 6 years with same design with ugly looking arrows that used to look nice like 10 years ago. I don't think Yahoo has a good vibe. They just buy and kill. Flickr is the only one that could survive, which can't be considered as success.