Chirag Desai


Don’t Yahoo! Tumblr

#

It hasn’t been all that long since Posterous was acquired (well, acuihired) by Twitter and I dealt with the closing of one of my favorite publishing platforms.* So my surprise — and subsequent introspection at my choices — at Yahoo’s acquisition of Tumblr was not surprising.

Acquisitions are tricky little things. Yahoo themselves, have a huge list of them, and the track record isn’t something to write home about just yet. But over the last few months, I do feel that Marissa Meyer’s moves have been largely positive towards Yahoo’s own spirit. The Tumblr announcement itself came in parallel with the long, long, long awaited major redesign to emancipated child Flickr.

And I will admit the initial signs are good. Unlike Posterous’ announcement which carried the rather dangerous ‘We’ll give you a way to export all your sites’, Yahoo’s announcement contained a very encouraging:

We promise not to screw it up.

Also worth reading is employee #2 Marco Arment’s thoughts on the acquisition and Tumblr as a product.

I realize the title of this post is a little condescending of the term Yahoo, and probably is not the Yahoo under Meyer. But I also really hope they don’t Yahoo Tumblr.