Report: Yahoo Board Approves Tumblr Acquisition

BY CHELSEA STARK | 1 HOUR AGO


Yahoo's board of directors has approved a $1.1 billion acquisition of blogging platform Tumblr, according to a breaking news alert from The Wall Street Journal.

The deal is reportedly an all-cash acquisition, according to WSJ, and Tumblr will maintain control of its operations.

Tumblr and Yahoo have not released any official statements.

There were rumors circulating Friday about the Tumblr acquisition, which stated Yahoo's board, under the direction of still-new CEO Marissa Mayer, would discuss the potential over the weekend.

According to a report from AllThingsD, Mayer was interested in the platform's younger-skewing user base, and had been in talks with the board about Tumblr for the last six weeks. AllThingsD also reported no other parties made bids on Tumblr.

While this would represent a huge acquisition for Yahoo, the company, under Mayer's direction, has purchased 10 startups since Mayer became CEO. Those companies include Stamped, a mobile app for finding and recommending activities, news browsing app Summly, and to-do list app Astrid.

Mayer described this speedy acquisition period in a Yahoo earnings call as a "sprint", where she would try to increase Yahoo's talent and the products it offers to gain new users and advertisers.

Tumblr has grown to a giant in the startup world since its launch in 2007. It had more than 67 million unique visitors in April, according to Quantcast, and 18 million of those came from mobile. According to Tumblr, there are more than 108 million blogs and 50 billion posts on the service to date.

Yahoo is planning a large press conference in New York Monday, which helped give those rumors credence.