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> if they stick to their guns and simply improve Tumblr without lowering its value to the community, I can see a real future for Yahoo, one where it isn't just

> if they stick to their guns and simply improve Tumblr without lowering its value to the community, I can see a real future for Yahoo, one where it isn't just irrelevant, but where it makes it's own products and creates new and exciting applications. I fail to see the connection between the acquisition of Tumblr and your vision of Yahoo suddenly becoming able to create new and exciting applications on its own as a consequence. According to Wikipedia, Yahoo's main source of revenue is search and display advertising (by far). By purchasing web sites without any business model and trying to monetise their traffic, they remove value from these sites (for the user) and add nothing that these sites couldn't have done by themselves, in exchange for huge amounts of cash that could instead be spent on developing those "new and exciting applications". They might get some value out of the talent they are acquiring with Tumblr on the long run, but I doubt that it'll be worth that much.

shanelja 13y ago
The connection is that success tends to beget success, Tumblr will give them a great platform to build their own cool applications on top of. Honestly, I don't believe this is a 'Buy Tumblr and stick an advert in every <div>' deal, it just doesn't make sense, they know from experience it will destroy the ecosystem of Tumblr. It would make so much more sense to integrate Tumblr with their own products and build on top of it.
- adventured 13y ago
  Success absolutely does not tend to beget success. There are radically more examples of success not begetting success, than the other way around (and that always has to be true numerically). There's nothing about past success that favors future success, and I'd argue it's the opposite: success today makes it even harder to maintain it tomorrow, as the market will assault your profit centers relentlessly with competition. Just ask AOL. Or ask Yahoo. Or talk to HP about Compaq. Or ask Gateway how their success beget success. Or talk to HTC about how their early Android success beget even more success. Or ask Borders and Blockbuster. Or AltaVista and Lycos and Excite. Or travel back in time to 1992, and ask IBM how all their success delivered them a massive wave of red ink. Or Netscape. Or ask Sun what happened to their incredible sales momentum circa 1999. The list is extraordinarily long in tech alone.

shanelja 13y ago

The connection is that success tends to beget success, Tumblr will give them a great platform to build their own cool applications on top of. Honestly, I don't believe this is a 'Buy Tumblr and stick an advert in every <div>' deal, it just doesn't make sense, they know from experience it will destroy the ecosystem of Tumblr. It would make so much more sense to integrate Tumblr with their own products and build on top of it.

adventured 13y ago
Success absolutely does not tend to beget success. There are radically more examples of success not begetting success, than the other way around (and that always has to be true numerically). There's nothing about past success that favors future success, and I'd argue it's the opposite: success today makes it even harder to maintain it tomorrow, as the market will assault your profit centers relentlessly with competition. Just ask AOL. Or ask Yahoo. Or talk to HP about Compaq. Or ask Gateway how their success beget success. Or talk to HTC about how their early Android success beget even more success. Or ask Borders and Blockbuster. Or AltaVista and Lycos and Excite. Or travel back in time to 1992, and ask IBM how all their success delivered them a massive wave of red ink. Or Netscape. Or ask Sun what happened to their incredible sales momentum circa 1999. The list is extraordinarily long in tech alone.