How Yahoo!’s Identity Crisis Infected Tumblr
Marissa Mayer's Tumultuous Year: Can Yahoo Be Saved?
When Marissa Mayer announced in May 2013 that Yahoo! was buying Tumblr, she immediately swore “not to screw it up.” Yahoo's chief executive officer was seeking to dispel fears that the company would suck all the life out of Tumblr in an attempt to increase its financial value. Instead, Yahoo seems to have left the site alone and somehow squandered much of Tumblr’s financial value in the process.
Yahoo paid $1.1 billion for Tumblr, the biggest acquisition in Mayer’s shopping spree for dozens of startups. As has been endlessly repeated, Wall Street values Yahoo’s core business at negative $8 billion. (You get this number by taking the full value of Yahoo shares and subtracting its stakes in Alibaba and Yahoo! Japan.) In this light, it’s hard to see many bright spots. Yahoo’s struggles to capitalize on Tumblr’s potential offer a window into what has gone wrong with the company as a whole.