Yahoo Pinkie-Swears It Won't Ruin Tumblr 162
Nerval's Lobster writes "Yahoo has agreed to acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion. As you know, Yahoo is a major corporation with a need to monetize its assets in a way that makes its shareholders happy, leaving open the question of whether it'll alter Tumblr's DNA in order to make the latter more of a significant cash generator. But at least for the moment, Yahoo seems content to leave its new property alone. 'Per the agreement and our promise not to screw it up, Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business,' read the company's press release. 'The product, service and brand will continue to be defined and developed separately with the same Tumblr irreverence, wit, and commitment to empower creators.' Tumblr CEO David Karp, who has been known to make some very anti-advertising comments in the past, will remain in place. Even so, anyone who likes Tumblr may have some cause for concern, because Yahoo has a history of making high-profile acquisitions that subsequently implode. Back in 1999, for example, it paid over $3 billion for GeoCities, another blogging network that it eventually shut down after years of failing the update the property. In 2005, it acquired popular photo-sharing Website Flickr, which it likewise allowed to languish and die. That same year it bought Delicious, a popular Webpage-bookmarking site, and did exactly nothing with it. So when Yahoo starts off its Tumblr press release with a promise not to screw things up, it's a self-deprecating nod toward all that history. New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has been on a bit of a buying spree of late, snatching up startups such as Summly in an attempt to make her company 'cool' and relevant."
Re:Geocities as a blogging site? (Score:5, Informative)
And flickr isn't dead either,. lol.
Languish and Die? (Score:5, Informative)
Flickr is a tremendous service, I use it frequently, as do many many other people from around the world. It has a huge community of more serious photographers and amateurs alike.
Just because it isn't "the big thing" anymore doesn't mean it is dead.
Re:Let's hold on a sec. I see what's she's doing. (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Justice Department obtained records of Fox New (Score:3, Informative)
Rather did himself in. He posted as news a flawed and forged story, because he "believed it to be true". Or did you forget what actually did Rather in? He then blamed it on his Producer(s), and that he was just reading the story. Or did you forget that part too?
Dan Rather got ratfucked by Karl Rove, that's what happened. George Bush's military records had been published years before Dan Rather reported on them, by J.H. Hatfield in Fortunate Son. Bush's people had been working for years to bury those records. So what did they do? They forged real documents and then tipped people off to the tells.
It was brilliant! Now people think the documents were faked and the story was false. It wasn't; George Bush was in a "champagne unit" of the TANG, and still went AWOL to work on his Dad's campaign. But Rather got taken in by forged versions of real documents that were forged in order to cast doubt on the authenticity of the real documents. Like I said, brilliant!
Re:Let's hold on a sec. I see what's she's doing. (Score:5, Informative)
Are so many people willing to just give out their information at less than a drop of a hat these days?
In a word; yes. It's definitely a tiny (albeit vocal) minority who even give it a second thought.
Re:Here on Slashdot (Score:5, Informative)
As [slashdot.org] previously [slashdot.org] noted [slashdot.org], "Slashdot Editor" Nick Kolakowski [slashdot.org] is once again promoting his own "Business Intelligence/Cloud" [slashdot.org] opinion pieces under the guise of the fake user Nerval's Lobster [slashdot.org]. He's simply trolling for pageviews, as he does just about every weekday... but this one is particularly shameless, as he's writing something almost no one will believe about a story we discussed yesterday. It's almost like his day consists of reading the comments of slashdot stories to see what deeply-seated opinions he can play off the next day to justify his job.
Don't feed the troll. Don't comment on stories "submitted" by Nerval's Lobster.
Re:Geocities as a blogging site? (Score:5, Informative)
Check out GeoCities on Tumblr. They post a screen shot of a GeoCities home page every 10 minutes or so.
http://oneterabyteofkilobyteage.tumblr.com/ [tumblr.com]
Re:Let's hold on a sec. I see what's she's doing. (Score:5, Informative)
I'd not really heard of Tumblr before, and went to their site, and to even get in and find out WTF the site is about, they seem to insist on you setting up an account with email.
You went to www.tumblr.com rather than a specific tumblr feed. I'm at work, so I couldn't provide you with any specific tumblr feed I'm familiar with, which brings us to your original question.
Tumblr is porn. Lots and lots of reasonably well organized porn. I'm sure there's other stuff there, but I have no idea why you'd bother.
(alright, there are some which are memes which start out as funny and then you get tired of after five minutes, such as this one popular during the last election. [tumblr.com])
Re:Let's hold on a sec. I see what's she's doing. (Score:4, Informative)
Except Yahoo is working with Facebook now, due to general patent shenanigans...so it's actually even worse because the data will all get merged...with Facebook.
Don't forget to Like their page for a chance to win a new Chevy and the right to vanish.