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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