WASHINGTON, May 20 (RIA Novosti) – Promising “not to screw it up,” Yahoo confirmed Monday it is buying social media blogging site Tumblr for $1.1 billion in cash.
“I’m delighted to announce that we’ve reached an agreement to acquire Tumblr,” Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo, announced on her own Tumblr blog Monday. “We promise not to screw it up. Tumblr is incredibly special and has a great thing going.”
Tumblr allows users to create their own blogs, follow other blogs and reblog posts they like.
Yahoo said Tumblr will continue to operate independently and David Karp, 26, the high school dropout who started the blogging site six years ago will remain as CEO. Tumblr says it has over 300 million monthly unique visitors, with 120,000 signups every day, and over 50 billion posts to date.
“The product, service and brand will continue to be defined and developed separately with the same Tumblr irreverence, wit, and commitment to empower creators,” Yahoo said in a statement.
Yahoo said the merger is expected to grow Yahoo’s audience by 50 percent to more than a billion monthly visitors, and grow traffic by about 20 percent.
The Tumblr acquisition is the latest move by Mayer, who joined Yahoo 10 months ago, to try and reenergize the Internet giant, which had lost much of its luster. It marks Yahoo’s most expensive takeover since it bought online search engine Overture a decade ago for $1.3 billion.
