Yahoo has confirmed it has bought Tumblr, in a deal noted yesterday to be in the region of $1.1 billion. The search company has already moved its company blog over to the blogging platform, and despite CEO Marissa Mayer saying "We promise not to screw it up," there is reportedly a large jump in the number of users moving from Tumblr to Wordpress.
In the latest step of CEO Marissa Mayer's plan to turn around popular but stagnating Internet giant Yahoo, the company's board has reportedly approved a $1.1 billion acquisition of the social sharing site Tumblr. The board met on Sunday to discuss the acquisition, which appears to have been a foregone conclusion due to the fact that Yahoo had already scheduled a Monday event on Friday. The company is expected to announce the acquisition at that event.
Yahoo is in discussions to acquire or work with blogging service Tumblr, according to reports. The talks between the two companies are, depending on the report, concerning a possible strategic alliance between the two or an outright purchase of Tumblr, with the search engine said to be offering as much as $1 billion.
In a post on its blog, customer support outsourcing firm Zendesk has reported that a hacker had penetrated its systems, and had purloined data from its customers, including Tumblr, Twitter, and Pinterest. Zendesk officials believe that the attacker was able to download email addresses and subject lines from support mails sent to its clients.
Blogging service Tumblr has launched a major revision of its iPhone app. Now at v3.0.0, the app's interface has been completely restructured, for instance using a new Dashboard interface, a new image view, and shortcuts to the camera and text post functions accessed by swiping the Compose button. An offline mode lets users post, like, reply, or reblog at any time; actions are synced when back online.
Spotify on Wednesday hoped to give more public exposure to its music through the Play Button. The new web code lets sites post individual songs or whole playlists that, while they need Spotify open in the background, can be controlled directly from the browser. Spotify sees it as a way to legally embed music and, by extension, pay artists for each listen.
Tumblr has released a significant update to its smartphone-optimized Android app. The overhaul brings a completely redesigned interface, placing live notifications for multiple blogs in one place. The company suggests the tweaks bring a better photo browsing experience, while users can now take advantage of the Tumblr Radar for quick access to popular images.
Boxee Box has just released its 1.5 software update behind live TV function of its new tuner that we had a chance to check out at CES. There are also some other functionalities the update enables. With the tuner add-on, this update, and the main Boxee Box hardware, users can access over-the-air TV broadcasts as well as Internet content.
Tumblr has joined the fight against the SOPA bill that would give the US the right to close the domains of any site that is thought to illegally host file sharing. The company announced it generated 87,834 phone calls to US Congressional representatives in an concentrated attempt to prevent the bill from becoming law. The Stop Online Piracy Act is before the House Judiciary Committee.
A new iPad app lets users create digital collages from a variety of sources including personal photo collections, Facebook photos, Bing search images and more. Called Mixel (free, App Store), it's also unique among similar apps as it shares all creations with the Mixel community to tear apart and do with what they will. Created by Dogpatch Labs, the app is meant for creative types who don't need to be sitting at a dedicated desk or studio to indulge in their passion, said founder Khoi Vinh.
