Yahoo Rumored To Be In Talks To Buy Tumblr For $1 billion

Yahoo is rumored to be on the verge of shelling out $1 billion for hosting site Tumblr. This could easily be a win-win deal as Yahoo needs the infusion of young blood while Tumblr is looking for liquidity. There is speculation that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has had her eye on the company for a while and has already met with its executives including Tumblr founder and CEO David Karp.

Tumblr has raised $125 million at a valuation of $800 million, so a $1 billion price tag would certainly be in the ballpark, especially since the microblogging site starting adding mobile ads to its mobile app in March. Over the past 6 months, the number of those using Tumblr's mobile app has quadrupled. Tumblr's growth is right now off the charts. The company had $13 million in revenue last year and is expecting as much as $100 million this year.
Yahoo has been shutting down many of its mobile apps and one estimate is that 80% of the company's apps could be gone by the end of the year. But a purchase of Tumblr would add a mobile app that could revitalize Yahoo in the mobile space, where it has yet to make a name for itself.

According to sources close to the situation, the Yahoo board plans to meet Sunday night to decide whether to approve a $1.1 billion all-cash offer for New York-based blogging site Tumblr.

Source: AllThingsD

Yahoo Moves Away From BlackBerry Smartphones

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is instituting a new company policy called Yahoo! Smart Phones, Smart Fun!” according to an internal memo obtained by Business Insider. Under the new policy, full and part time U.S. employees of Yahoo will be receiving their choice of the iPhone 5, Galaxy S III, HTC One X, EVO 4G LTE or Nokia Lumia 920.

In addition to buying the devices, Yahoo will also be covering the monthly plans for data and voice.

The possible casualty in this fight is that this means Yahoo is moving away from the company supplied BlackBerry devices, and they are not offered amongst the choices. As Mayer states in the memo, “we’d like our employees to have devices similar to our users, so we can think and work as the majority of our users do.” RIM can’t be too happy about such a statement, but considering the declining market share of the BlackBerry line, it makes sense.

No word as to when the new phones will be arriving in employee hands, but seeing as some of the devices have not yet been released, it would appear it will be a staged rollout.

The thought process behind this initiative is:

We have a very exciting update to share with you today – we are announcing Yahoo! Smart Phones, Smart Fun! As of today, Yahoo is moving off of BlackBerries as our corporate phones and on to smartphones in 22 countries. A few weeks ago, we said that we would look into smartphone penetration rates globally and take those rates into account when deciding on corporate phones. Ideally, we’d like our employees to have devices similar to our users, so we can think and work as the majority of our users do.

Moving forward, we’ll offer you a choice of devices as well as provide monthly plans for the data and phone.

The smartphone choices that we are including in the program are:

* Apple iPhone 5

* Android:

- Samsung Galaxy S3

- HTC One X

- HTC EVO 4G LTE

* Windows Phone 8:

- Nokia Lumia 920

We’re getting started right away and taking orders starting now.