Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr, the microblogging and social networking website, for $1.1 billion USD. Tumblr offers little revenue but lots of eyeballs if Yahoo can monetarize them. Now Yahoo is bidding for Hulu, the streaming video service. After years of ineffective responses while Google, Facebook, and others took large chunks of the online advertising market, Yahoo is fighting back. Can Yahoo reignite the momentum it had at the turn of the century? What do you think?
Yahoo failed with GeoCities and Flickr. Doubt they’ll do much better with Tumblr. Still, a more agile, user-focused competitor to Google and FB would be welcome.
I have faith in the new Yahoo! under Mayer.
They’ve turned Flickr around and Karp will still be leading Tumblr, sounds good for now.
It’s Marissa Mayer in command, and she learned quite a bit during her tenure at Google. So I guess she has a grab on where to go. Yahoo is now almost a little Google. And that’s good.
I think Yahoo is finally on track with a viable strategy. As they acquire these companies they are buidling a solid multimedia, social-networking base. We need them to keep Google and Facebook honest. Kudos to Yahoo and good luck.
They’re buying eyeballs like it’s 1999. Can they monetarize them? That’s the question. The Flickr redesign will tell us whether they know what they’re doing.
If they do buy Hulu I hope they get rid of the ads on the paid Hulu Plus service. I would actually pay for it if they did… I know they have to make money so I’ll deal with it without complaining when I’m using it for free, but I don’t see the point in paying money to see commercials. That’s why I don’t have cable
No.
Yahoo is as good as dead if you ask me. I do not see what they provide of value and could keep them alive in the long term.
I think they still rely on inertia from good old times. Their current offerings are crap and/or niche: their email is crap, their search is crap, their messenger is crap.
What else do they do? Flikr? niche. Tumblr? niche (but nice porn!).
IF they succeed in buying Hulu and play their cards perfectly they get a chance at staying relevant in the entertainment industry. But that’s a very BIG “if”.