When Yahoo officially announced it had
brought micro-blogging site Tumblr on Monday (20th May), it didn’t
come as a real shock, as whispers of the impending deal first surfaced last
week.
In the lead up to and since the
buy-out, the Internet has been flooded with articles, discussions and outrage. Experts
say the deal is part of Yahoo’s efforts to revive the struggling company by
attracting a younger, trendier audience (Tumblr is strongest in the 18-24 age
bracket). Not only does the deal give access to younger users but also a fast-growing
number of consumers who are, in general, very engaged online.
Yahoo says it expects to grow Tumblr’s audience by 50%
to more than a billion monthly visitors and to grow traffic by approximately
20%. The million – or should I say billion -dollar question is: how does Yahoo
plan to monetize Tumblr? Something Tumblr itself has never done. Pre-Melissa
Mayer (Yahoo’s CEO), the web pioneer had a miserable reputation of taking on
new companies and doing nothing with them (think 2005 - Flickr and Delicious). Mayer has been proactive in addressing users
concerns and preempting media backlash by releasing a statement on the same day
via her newly acquired Tumblr account, promising not to ‘screw it up’ and even
poking fun at the buy-out.
However this hasn’t stopped 72,000 people exporting
their Tumblr blogs to rival blogging site Wordpress on Sunday evening.
I think its safe to say we won’t be witnessing the
birth of ‘Yahooblr’ but with a price tag of $1.1 billion (£723m), there’s no
doubt there are some anxious shareholders waiting for answers on how to
monetize the blogging site, and quickly. I expect it will take a similar route
to YouTube, after Google bought them in 2006, with the introduction of
advertising and other monetizing services onto the site. It’s been a commercial
success for Google because content marketing is more accepted by young
millennial users now - the audience that Yahoo is courting.
Yahoo would be stupid to storm in and make radical changes,
this would only serve to alienate users in their masses, something they have promised
not to do. Founder David Karp will remain at Tumblr as CEO. Karp has been quick
to defend the buy-out by pointing out the benefits to users of joining up with
the ‘original internet company’. According to Karp - Tumblr will only get
faster and better.
It’ll be interesting to see Tumblr evolve. To me,
there are two big, immediate challenges Mayer and Karp are going to be faced
with: How to remain cool when you are owned by a less cool corporate entity and
how to monetize Tumblr without alienating users?
Here are some of my favorite Tumblr responses:
By Pema Seely
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