Name: Tech Debate- Yahoo/Tumblr
Uploaded: 2014-10-14
Duration: 2 min 22 s

[ MUSIC ] Yahoo! is under pressure to justify it's 1. 1 billion dollar acquisition of Tumblr. The latest reports say it wants to turn it into the next YouTube? Erin, what does that even mean? Well basically, Marissa Mayer's been dying for a video play ever since she took the helm of CEO. She tried to buy daily motion and got blocked by the French government, she tried to buy Twitch, Amazon ended up winning that. Now she's looking internally, and realizing oh, I did buy Tumblr, popular with teens, has a big loyal growing audience. Maybe that could be the next video play that I have. And she's certainly been on an acquisition tear tear, right. I mean aside from all the products and companies she's acquired, she's acquired some talent, right? Mm- hm. Some existing mainstream media talent. David Pogue, the former New York Times tech. Yep. Columnist. Katy Couric, the former CBS broadcaster, she hired both of them to start this whole, you know, we are- Yeah, those moves have been totally criticized too, because it's like what is this really doing for Yahoo, what is this bringing in. But there might be a method behind the madness because YouTube has stars and personalities. Tumblr does not. So maybe if she can find some weird way to merge those that could equal money. Yeah. But it's kind of unclear right now. She hasn't made any formal announcements yet. Do you really think this will work? I mean, I, I'm, I'm very skeptical. I think about using Tumblr, and it's, you know, this microblock and services. It's very linear. IT. It's pictures and, and audio and some video hosted by YouTube and Vimeo. Right. Do, do you really think that they can move from the display advertising that they've tried. Mm- hm. To video? You know? Where that, CPMs are much higher but. Yeah right. Here's the thing. So YouTube has maybe, depending on who you ask, up to 6 billion dollars in revenue from last year. Tumblr when it was bought had like 15 million dollars, and they haven't updated it since. So there's a big gap there. There's a big opportunity and right now YouTube though is in a position of power, might be losing some of those big stars it's created. They only make 55 % of the revenue that their videos bring in, so they're starting to look elsewhere and say like okay could I make more money if I went on my own platform or if I went to. Facebook or somewhere else. So Tumblr could possibly exploit that and bring some big personalities to its platform. I'm barrish on it. What do you think? I think it sounds a little bit like they're throwing darts at the wall to be, like, okay, listen, active investors. We have a plan. Look at YouTube. See the money. We can do that, too. So it'll really come down to how the execute it, but. You know, teens love Tumblr, so maybe it'll work. Fair enough. For one show with lots of personality, come to www. Fortune. com for more Tech Debate.