This article was published on June 20, 2013

Yahoo completes Tumblr acquisition, re-emphasizes it will be independently operated and developed separately


Yahoo completes Tumblr acquisition, re-emphasizes it will be independently operated and developed separately

Yahoo today announced it has completed its acquisition of Tumblr. The company first announced plans to snap up the blogging platform exactly a month ago, on May 20, for “approximately $1.1 billion,” the majority of which was paid in cash.

“Tumblr is an incredible company,” Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said in a statement. “I’m thrilled to officially welcome David and his team to Yahoo!”

As part of today’s closing news, Yahoo once again emphasized Tumblr will be independently operated. This means the product, service, and brand will continue to be defined and developed separately by the Tumblr team, of which David Karp will remain CEO.

“We are beyond excited to partner with Marissa and the wonderful team at Yahoo! that we’ve already come to know well,” Karp said in regards to the deal’s completion. “Their support and belief in our vision gives us an opportunity now to be the most ambitious we’ve ever been.”

At the time of the original announcement, the six-year old New York company had more than 50 billion blog posts (and 75 million more arriving each day) and was seeing more than 300 million monthly unique visitors, 120,000 signups every day, 900 posts per second, and 24 billion minutes spent on the site each month. More than half of Tumblr’s users are using the mobile app and do an average of seven sessions per day.

Yahoo also said it expects Tumblr to grow its own audience by 50 percent to more than 1 billion monthly visitors, and to grow traffic by approximately 20 percent. In return, Yahoo, will support Tumblr’s efforts to create advertising opportunities that “are seamless and enhance the user experience.”

See also – Tumblr teams up with Ford, Universal, AT&T, Denny’s and more to bring ads to your dashboard and Tumblr Creative Director Jacob Bijani leaves after 5 years with the new Yahoo property

Top Image Credit: Mario Tama / Getty Images

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