Is this acquisition going to be good or bad for Tumblr users? Good or bad for Yahoo? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Even before the acquisition was announced formally, a lot of users who got wind of the deal started jumping ship to alternative platforms. WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg wrote a blog post on Sunday night about a huge spike in imports from Tumblr.

“Imports have actually spiked on the rumors even though it’s Sunday: normally we import 400-600 posts an hour from Tumblr, last hour it was over 72,000,” he wrote.

He later updated the post to say that some people are reading too much into those numbers, adding, “I don’t think there will be an exodus from Tumblr.”

In the comments section, he said, “I don’t think there will be any sort of exodus from Tumblr. For most folks habits overcome internet-outrage. Even if a million people left, that’s just about a week’s worth of signups.”

We haven’t seen an update on the number of imports now that the deal has been officially public for a day, but my guess is that it has increased significantly.

A petition to “Stop Yahoo! from Buying Tumblr” quickly racked up nearly 169,000 signatures. Of course there is no way that this will actually keep the deal from happening, but it does show that there is a great deal of discontent among users (and you have to think there are many more with a similar attitude who did not bother to sign, or even see the petition).

User concerns have ranged from “Yahoo is going to make Tumblr uncool” to “Yahoo is going to clutter up Tumblr with ads” to “Yahoo is going to eliminate porn on Tumblr” among other things.

Yahoo and Tumblr have both indicated from the start that they “promise not to screw it up”. Here’s a line straight out of the press release:

Per the agreement and our promise not to screw it up, Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business. David Karp will remain CEO. The product, service and brand will continue to be defined and developed separately with the same Tumblr irreverence, wit, and commitment to empower creators.

Yahoo says Tumblr will deploy Yahoo’s personalization technology and search infrastructure to “help its users discover creators, bloggers, and content they’ll love”. This could actually be a good thing for Tumblr, as its current content discovery features could use a great deal of improvement.

“Tumblr is redefining creative expression online,” said Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. “On many levels, Tumblr and Yahoo! couldn’t be more different, but, at the same time, they couldn’t be more complementary. Yahoo is the Internet’s original media network. Tumblr is the Internet’s fastest-growing media frenzy. Both companies are homes for brands – established and emerging. And, fundamentally, Tumblr and Yahoo! are both all about users, design, and finding surprise and inspiration amidst the everyday.”

“Our team isn’t changing,” said Tumblr CEO David Karp. “Our roadmap isn’t changing. And our mission — to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve — certainly isn’t changing. But we’re elated to have the support of Yahoo! and their team who share our dream to make the Internet the ultimate creative canvas. Tumblr gets better faster with more resources to draw from.”

His statements in a blog post were a little more colorful.

So, let’s address some of those concerns users have.

1. Will Yahoo make Tumblr uncool?

Well, this is obviously subjective. To some, simply being part of a major corporation makes you uncool. It certainly didn’t help Myspace. Yahoo itself hasn’t exactly been considered “cool” by portions of the Internet in recent years either, however, the company is making a lot of moves (particularly since Mayer took over as CEO) to change things. That includes some big acquisitions and some new apps.

In fact, even since the Tumblr announcement, Yahoo announced a major revamp of its popular photography service, Flickr. This is a property that has historically had a massive following, and has remained one of Yahoo’s bright spots throughout the dark times, but through the revolving door of CEOs in recent years, many think Flickr has been neglected. Well, no more. You can read about the new experience here.

Other recent Yahoo acquisitions include: Loki Studios (mobile gaming), MileWise (travel search), GoPollGo (real-time surveys), Astrid (productivity), Summly (news aggregation/summarization), Jybe (social recommendation), Alike (social recommendation), Snip.it (social), OnTheAir (video chat) and Stamped (recommendation). These are all under Mayer. Tumblr makes 11 acquisitions (or at least announcements) since October. The company made only that many from February 2008 all the way up to this past October, with the last one before October coming in November, 2011.

So while it remains to be seen if Yahoo can truly become cool again, it is at least trying its damnedest, and spending a lot of money to do so. Whether that translates into making Tumblr uncool, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Hunter Walk, the director of Product Management at Google, who focuses on YouTube, wrote an interesting blog post called, “Don’t Mess Up Tumblr: Five Lessons Learned From YouTube”. In a nutshell, his lessons are: protect Tumblr from “helpful” Yahoos, avoid locality bias in product development, stop short term monetization that won’t scale, infrastructure (tech, process) on Tumblr terms, and separate identity/separate space.

“When Google purchased YouTube there was lots of skepticism and outright derision,” Walk recalls. “Today analysts estimate its enterprise value is approaching $20 billion. So I guess it all worked out, eh? Being one of the first Googlers to join YouTube after the acquisition taught me a lot about what works, and doesn’t work, when you bring a fast growing community property into a larger entity. There are clearly parallels between our situation in 2007 and what Tumblr will experience with Yahoo. Marissa is a friend from our time together at Google and I’m impressed, but not surprised, by her decisiveness and vision. I don’t know David Karp but we share a number of mutual friends and at a 2012 group dinner he passed me the salt, so we’ve got that.”

He goes on to elaborate on each of the lessons.

2. Is Yahoo going to clutter up Tumblr with ads?

I guess it depends on your definition of clutter, but it does look like Tumblr will be getting some new ads. At least one report indicates that they could come as soon as today.

Mayer said flat out in the announcement that the two companies will be working together to create advertising opportunities that are “seamless and enhance user experience”.

Business Insider has some more from the conference call about deal:

Mayer says that Yahoo released “Yahoo Stream Ads” in May, which take text ads and put them in the news stream on Yahoo.com. She says you can expect more of that on Tumblr. On Tumblr, there is the dashboard, which is like Facebook’s News Feed or inbox. Today, Tumblr does some advertising there. Yahoo would like to “introduce a very light ad load” there. Yahoo also might work with some bloggers who want ads on their blogs. That would only be done with permission. Mayer says the ad units will be native and follow the form and function of Tumblr. She says that you can tell interests of users.

In fact, Business Insider also managed to obtain Tumblr’s ad sales pitch deck describing the ad experience to potential clients.

“With Tumblr’s newest ad product, brands finally are front and center, with the world’s greatest creators,” one of the slides says. “Welcome to the richest content stream in the world.”

According to the pitch deck, the ads will be delivered directly in the native dashboard streams of millions of users. The “Web In-Stream” product is in beta, and Tumblr is offering an exclusive launch partnership opportunity to a handful of select brands for the ad unit’s debut, according to the slides, which say that all Tumblr post types are supported. Partners are apparently being offered category-exclusivity.

For $200K, according to the slides, partners can get ten desktop Radar posts within a 30-day span (between May 21 and July 21), 24 hours each for 5% of all Dashboard page views, support from the Tumblr team, U.S. guaranteed impression serving only, over 25 million dashboard impressions ($8.00CPM on Radar impressions), and multi-week exposure as premier sponsor in Spotlight. They also get ninety-day access to Tumblr Analytics and three weeks as an exclusive beta in-stream launch sponsor partner with ten in-stream posts within a 21 day span (June 1 and June 21).

Regardless of what users think of the ads, businesses will certainly have new opportunities with Tumblr’s massive audience.

3. Is Yahoo going to eliminate porn on Tumblr?

Regardless of whether or not you consider porn to be a taboo subject, it makes a big difference in Tumblr’s stats. Tumblr is full of it. If Tumblr gets rid of it, it’s going to drive away some percentage of users, not to mention become less cool to some percentage of users.

Mayer was asked about it at the Flickr event on Monday evening. She said they will not censor content. “No, we won’t,” she is quoted as saying. “It’s the nature of user-generated content.”

It doesn’t stop YouTube, but, Mayer probably earned some “cool” points with that one.

Tumblr currently has over 300 million monthly unique visitors, and gets 120,000 signups every day. It sees 900 posts per second and 24 billion minutes are spent on the site each month. Over half of its users are using the mobile app, and on average, participate in seven sessions per day. Yahoo expects the acquisition to grow its audience by fifty percent to over a billion monthly visitors, and to grow traffic by about twenty percent.

The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, and is expected to close in the second half of the year.

Was this a good acquisition for Yahoo? Will this hurt or benefit Tumblr users? Can Yahoo become cool again? Is Yahoo already cool again? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Image: NMA (YouTube)

Fear not, Tumblr users. Your porn isn’t going anywhere.

For the first time since the acquisition announcement, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has made a clear decree on her company’s role in censoring content – mainly that they have none. During Yahoo’s new Flickr event Monday night in NYC, Mayer was asked directly whether she will restrict content on Tumblr.

“No, we won’t,” she said. “It’s the nature of user-generated content.”

She continued on to say that it’s important to have community tool like “NSFW” tags that Tumblr already has in place. There you go, folks, that’s about as definitive as you’re going to get.

Before those remarks, Mayer had been a little more vague about Tumblr’s porny bits.

“The width and breadth of content on Tumblr is what’s exciting and has allowed it to reach more users.” she said during a conference call Monday morning. She also said that Yahoo would have to make use of good ad targeting, to assuage any concerns from future advertisers. And there will be more ads inside Tumblr, that’s for sure.

“We promise not to screw it up. Tumblr is incredibly special and has a great thing going. We will operate Tumblr independently,” said Mayer during her announcement.

At a press event in NYC, just hours after Mayer officially announced the company’s acquisition of Tumblr, Yahoo unveiled a completely revamp Flickr – complete with a fresh UI redesign and a whole hell of a lot of storage.

The latter is probably the most significant news to come out of the announcement. Starting today, you now have a free terabyte of space. That’s huge. As Yahoo says, “you could take a photo every hour for forty years without filling one.” That’s approximately 873,813 4.0 megapixel photos, 436,906 8mp photos, or 218,453 16mp photos. This upgraded storage also means that you can house longer videos on Flickr – 3 minutes at 1080p per video.

The interface has received a massive upgrade as well, as Flickr has done away with most of the white space on the site to give users a truly immersive photo experience.

“We want Flickr to be the most amazing community and place for you to share your photos. So, we’re also revealing a beautiful new design that puts photos at the heart of your Flickr experience, where they should always be. Whether it’s a sweeping landscape or a family portrait, we want every photo to be at its most spectacular,” says Flickr’s Markus Spiering. “Your homepage is now a gateway to everything you care about, and all the photos Flickr has to offer. Our new Activity Feed combines your friends’ recent uploads with activity on your own photos, and all in a beautiful design that lets you share and interact right on the page.”

The individual photo pages have been improved to highlight the image in high-res, pushing the photo information below the fold.

There are also some new paid options for the service – for $49.99 a year you can get rid of all the ads on the site, and for $499.99 you can snag 2TB of storage.

Flickr also unveiled a new Android app, which brings it up to speed with the iOS upgrade the service received a few months ago.

“The world is going mobile, and in December we took the first big step to send Flickr wherever you go with a new and beloved iPhone app. Our brand new Android app pushes the boundaries on beauty even further. We designed it with your needs in mind: how you interact, how you share, and how you view photos when you’re on the go.”

The new site is live, as is the new Android app. Check it out.

“In terms of working together, Tumblr can deploy Yahoo!’s personalization technology and search infrastructure to help its users discover creators, bloggers, and content they’ll love,” she said in the announcementl. “In turn, Tumblr brings 50 billion blog posts (and 75 million more arriving each day) to Yahoo!’s media network and search experiences. The two companies will also work together to create advertising opportunities that are seamless and enhance user experience.”

On a conference call Monday, she said we could expect more ads like Yahoo’s “Yahoo Stream” ads on Tumblr, and that they would introduce a “very light ad load” on the dashboard, and might work with bloggers who want ads on their blogs. Ad units would be native.

Well, we might be seeing some new ads sooner rather than later. Tumblr will be launching a test of in-stream ads on desktop users’ dashboards as soon as Tuesday, according to Business Insider, who has obtained Tumblr’s ad sales pitch deck. Here’s the first of a handful of a slides, BI shared:

“With Tumblr’s newest ad product, brands finally are front and center, with the world’s greatest creators,” one of the slides says. “Welcome to the richest content stream in the world.”

According to the pitch deck, the ads will be delivered directly in the native dashboard streams of millions of users. The “Web In-Stream” product is in beta, and Tumblr is offering an exclusive launch partnership opportunity to a handful of select brands for the ad unit’s debut, according to the slides, which say that all Tumblr post types are supported. Partners are apparently being offered category-exclusivity.

For $200K, according to the slides, partners can get ten desktop Radar posts within a 30-day span (between May 21 and July 21), 24 hours each for 5% of all Dashboard page views, support from the Tumblr team, U.S. guaranteed impression serving only, over 25 million dashboard impressions ($8.00CPM on Radar impressions), and multi-week exposure as premier sponsor in Spotlight. They also get ninety-day access to Tumblr Analytics and three weeks as an exclusive beta in-stream launch sponsor partner with ten in-stream posts within a 21 day span (June 1 and June 21).

A lot of Tumblr users are already freaking out.

But just how much porn is on Tumblr? A lot. We know that. But until now, we’ve never had any real figures. Data from SimilarGroup, obtained by TechCrunch, suggests that more than 11% of Tumblr’s top 200,000 domains are very NSFW.

The analysis looked at the 200,000 most-popular blogs on Tumblr and found that 22,775 would be considered “adult.” That works out to 11.4%. Yes, Marissa Mayer just bought a network that’s more than 1/10th porn.

SimilarGroup also looked at traffic to said adult Tumblr blogs and found that they account for 16.6% of Tumblr’s traffic. Not only that, but just over 22% of referral traffic to Tumblr comes from adult websites. 8% of outbound Tumblr referrals lead straight to porn.

Tumblr has a porn empire. Is that going to be a problem for Yahoo?

Maybe, but Mayer isn’t suggesting that quite yet.

“The width and breadth of content on Tumblr is what’s exciting and has allowed it to reach more users,” said Mayer this morning when asked about Tumblr’s “not-brand-safe” content (read: porn).

In order to deal with it, Mayer said that Yahoo would need to have good targeting for ads. Maybe that will be the strategy going forward – smart ad targeting that will make sure that the porny bits stay away from the non-porny bits. But this study proves that adult content isn’t just a fringe element of Tumblr’s massive blog network – it’s a big part of it.

As you’ve probably heard, Yahoo has announced plans to acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion. And currently, a petition on ipetitions.com to thwart the deal has garnered over 168,000 signatures.

Of course, there are a multitude of gripes that Tumblr users have with the Yahoo purchase. Maybe they think Yahoo is too uncool, and will ruin the awesome Tumblr experience. Maybe they look at Flickr, and foresee Yahoo running Tumblr into the ground. Maybe they’re worried that Yahoo is going to rid Tumblr of all of its porn in an attempt to make it more family friendly. Maybe they’re pissed about the new ads, which are most definitely on their way to Tumblr.

Whatever the reason, plenty of Tumblr users are pissed. Just take a look at the posts on Tumblr with a #yahoo tag. Tumblr users are gif-ing their anger.

“Stop Yahoo! from buying Tumblr!! If this happens, the entire interface will be changed, and millions of users will delete their accounts – me being one of them. Please, please, please sign this to stop this!!” says the petition creator.

Only time will tell if Yahoo does indeed make Tumblr “better, and faster,” as they say they will. Both Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Tumblr CEO David Karp say that Yahoo is going to take a hands-off approach with Tumblr. It’s going to run independently with Karp retained as CEO. Mayer says that Yahoo promises “not to screw it up.”

And about the porn thing? Mayer’s not coming for it, don’t worry.

This petiition isn’t the only sign that many Tumblr users are thinking of abandoning ship. WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg reported a spike in Tumblr defections to his blogging service – 72,000 in the short time following the announcement.

Even before the acquisition was officially announced this morning, on onslaught of users importing Tumblr blogs to WordPress already began. That is, at least, according to WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg.

He writes, “Imports have actually spiked on the rumors even though it’s Sunday: normally we import 400-600 posts an hour from Tumblr, last hour it was over 72,000.”

Despite what would appear to be a mass exodus of users leaving Tumblr for WordPress, Mullenweg appears to think that’s not the case. After he initially wrote the post, he updated it to say, “Some people are reading too much into the import numbers — I don’t think there will be an exodus from Tumblr.”

He then pointed readers to the comments on this post, where he said, “I don’t think there will be any sort of exodus from Tumblr. For most folks habits overcome internet-outrage. Even if a million people left, that’s just about a week’s worth of signups.”

Even still, other blogging platforms are likely to get a little bump out of this.

According to a recent report from Pingdom, WordPress’ share of the world’s top blogs has already been on the rise.

If you are unfamiliar with Tumblr, know this: there is a lot of porn on Tumblr – artsy nude content, straight up porn, pretty much all colors of the NSFW rainbow. It makes up a significant part of the Tumblr landscape, and without it, Tumblr wouldn’t really be Tumblr. Some Tumblr users are concerned that Yahoo will waltz in and attempt to change all of that. Before the acquisition went official, some analysts worried that Tumblr’s NSFW underbelly would be an issue for the folks at Yahoo who were considering the deal.

But it wasn’t. Now that the acquisition is official, it’s looking like Yahoo is committed to keeping Tumblr running as is, and that the porn problem, well, isn’t really a problem. During her conference call to discuss the deal, Mayer had this to say when asked about all of the “not-brand-safe” content out there on Tumblr.

“The width and breadth of content on Tumblr is what’s exciting and has allowed it to reach more users.”

And when it comes to possible concerns from advertisers? Well, Mayer noted that Yahoo will just have to have good targeting. Mayer said that Yahoo is going to put more ads inside the Tumblr feed, so we know it’s coming. But Yahoo can pick and choose where they throw those ads, and can steer clear of any content that may concern potential clients.

“We promise not to screw it up. Tumblr is incredibly special and has a great thing going. We will operate Tumblr independently. David Karp will remain CEO. The product roadmap, their team, their wit and irreverence will all remain the same as will their mission to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve. Yahoo! will help Tumblr get even better, faster,” said Mayer in her announcement.

And in his, Tumblr CEO David Karp said that “before touching on how awesome this is, let me try to allay any concerns: We’re not turning purple. Our headquarters isn’t moving. Our team isn’t changing. Our roadmap isn’t changing. And our mission – to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve – certainly isn’t changing.”

That sounds like Yahoo is going to adopt a fairly hands-off approach to the Tumblr, and that’s good news for Tumblr users. Sure, people lie and things change, but as of right now it appears that Yahoo isn’t that concerned about all of those naughty parts on Tumblr. Carry on.

Tumblr users can expect some ads to be hitting their streams.

“In terms of working together, Tumblr can deploy Yahoo!’s personalization technology and search infrastructure to help its users discover creators, bloggers, and content they’ll love,” said Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer in her announcement of the deal. “In turn, Tumblr brings 50 billion blog posts (and 75 million more arriving each day) to Yahoo!’s media network and search experiences. The two companies will also work together to create advertising opportunities that are seamless and enhance user experience.”

Business Insider has more from the conference call about the acquisition:

Mayer says that Yahoo released “Yahoo Stream Ads” in May, which take text ads and put them in the news stream on Yahoo.com. She says you can expect more of that on Tumblr. On Tumblr, there is the dashboard, which is like Facebook’s News Feed or inbox. Today, Tumblr does some advertising there. Yahoo would like to “introduce a very light ad load” there. Yahoo also might work with some bloggers who want ads on their blogs. That would only be done with permission. Mayer says the ad units will be native and follow the form and function of Tumblr. She says that you can tell interests of users.

As the animated GIF in Yahoo’s announcement says, “Don’t panic.”

Still, many are panicking. It doesn’t take long to see an overwhelming amount of negative reactions about the deal with a quick “Yahoo” search on Tumblr.com.

And of course, someone has already set up a “Yahoo Staff” parody account under the “Yahoo-Overlords” handle, with the initial post:

hello friends we are excited to ruin your website have a nice day

“We promise not to screw it up. Tumblr is incredibly special and has a great thing going. We will operate Tumblr independently. David Karp will remain CEO,” says Mayer.

So, how does Tumblr founder and CEO David Karp feel about the buy? “Fuck yeah,” he writes in a blog post.

He also assures Tumblr users that the company is “not turning purple,” and that their mission and roadmap are not changing.

Check out Karp’s full blog post:

Everyone, I’m elated to tell you that Tumblr will be joining Yahoo.

Before touching on how awesome this is, let me try to allay any concerns: We’re not turning purple. Our headquarters isn’t moving. Our team isn’t changing. Our roadmap isn’t changing. And our mission – to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve – certainly isn’t changing.

So what’s new? Simply, Tumblr gets better faster. The work ahead of us remains the same – and we still have a long way to go! – but with more resources to draw from.

Yahoo is the original Internet company, and Marissa and her team share our dream to make the Internet the ultimate creative canvas. I couldn’t be more excited to have her help. We also share a vision for Tumblr’s business that doesn’t compromise the community and product we love. Plus both our logos end with punctuation!

As always, everything that Tumblr is, we owe to this unbelievable community. We won’t let you down.

Fuck yeah,
David