Yahoo may stumble with Tumblr

The microblogging platform Tumblr is on the market and the expected buyer, Yahoo, almost certainly would burden the site with a layer of bureaucracy that will drive away many of its 100 million bloggers.
Blindly stumbling to reinvent itself, Yahoo is reportedly willing to spend $1.1 billion for Tumblr for one big reason: It would provide an instant supply of the youthful audience that the search engine desperately needs and woefully lacks.
Yahoo’s board approved the buy yesterday according to the Wall Street Journal. But the problem with the email giant owning Tumblr is twofold: Yahoo has no identity and it has demonstrated no ability to find one.
Yahoo’s track record for handling user-generated content is atrocious.
It purchased Flickr in 2005 when the photo-sharing site was at the forefront of the social media revolution. But Yahoo’s reign has meant unwanted censorship, embarrassing tech hiccups, a lack of innovation — and worst of all, a fundamental failure to recognize that Flickr’s greatest asset was in its early establishment of social networks.
A decade ago, Flickr was already identifying relationships among its users, allowing them to tag family members and friends.
Unfortunately, with an expected $1.1 billion price tag, that buyer will be all corporation and no Lady Gaga — who, by the way, would have been a match made in heaven for the site.

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Google Glass Can Now Do More - Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr Apps Released for Glasses

Google might have been mum on its much-buzzed-about glasses on day one of its big Google I/O Developer's Conference, but today the company has announced a series of new Glass-based applications.
Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Elle magazine all unveiled new applications for the connected glasses, which overlay digital information in the physical world. The Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr options all allow Glass wearers to share their photos on the respective social networks straight from the glasses.
While the Facebook app is restricted at the moment to just sharing photos taken with the glasses, Twitter allows for that feature and some other notification options. The app will also allow you to see Twitter notifications and respond to messages.
"In addition to sharing photos, you can also keep up with the people you follow on Twitter through notifications — for mentions, DMs and Tweets from users for whom you've turned on notifications. As always, you can reply to, retweet or favorite these Tweets," Twitter engineering manager Shiv Ramamurthi said in a Twitter blog post today.
ABC News tried out the Facebook and Twitter apps and can report that they did work as promised. We snapped a photo on the glasses, tapped it once to share and then we were able to select the social network to share it with. However, installing the sharing-based apps are a bit clunky at the moment. You must install the apps from the Glass app on the phone and then enable sharing in the web-based Glass control panel.

Candice Glover wins American Idol Season 12

Candice Glover was crowned the Season 12 winner of "American Idol" on Thursday night, giving us all a lesson in hard work and perseverance and proving that talent really can carry the day. She is the first female "Idol" winner since Jordin Sparks in Season 6.

"I can't even …" she said after Ryan Seacrest had named her as the winner and Kree Harrison, her bestie rival, as runner-up. "Three years."

The lush-voiced 23-year-old soul singer from St. Helena Island, S.C., who'd toiled as a travel agent, waiting for her chance to step into the spotlight and show the world what she could do, had auditioned for "Idol" twice -- in Seasons 9 and 11 -- before making it to the live rounds this season. This year, she's said, she came back with a new confidence and a clear sense of who she is.