Of all the questions about monetization, advertising, and scale that have surfaced since Yahoo announced its $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr, one giant point is getting buried: what to do with Tumblr’s porn?
“We would like to look at them and understand how we could introduce ads, in a very light ad load, where the impact is really created, because the ads really fit the users’ expectations and follow the form and function of the dashboard.”
Wordpress is the world’s most popular blogging platform, and according to CEO Matt Mullenweg, Yahoo’s acquisition of Tumblr was already made it more so.
Yahoo has confirmed it is buying Tumblr for $1.1 billion. “We promise not to screw it up,” Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer wrote on her Tumblr blog.
Tumblr CEO David Karp reassured users in his own Tumblr post that the acquisition would not change his six-year-old site’s user experience or mission, but rather make it faster.
Where is Yahoo turning its attention to now? AllThingsD reports that Marissa Mayer iseyeing Tumblr with hopes to land some sort of deal, be it an acquisition or a percentage stake.
The White House Now Has Tumblr…
The White House, Tumbling Things
“We see some great things here at the White House every day, and sharing that stuff with you is one of the best parts of our jobs. That’s why we’re launching a Tumblr. We’ll post things like the best quotes from President Obama, or video of young scientists visiting the White House for the science fair, or photos of adorable moments with Bo. We’ve got some wonky charts, too. Because to us, those are actually kind of exciting.”
Two weeks after Tumblr abruptly announced it was closing up Storyboard, its year-long journalism experiment that surfaced interesting content from within its blogging community, CEO David Karp opened up about why he decided to put it to rest.
“If we could just tell these stories in the same way great journalists can, it might be a lot more natural and potent than the product marketing that most companies do,” Karp said in a discussion at Fast Company’s Innovation Uncensored conference Tuesday afternoon. “But we didn’t find the formula for it.”
Karp added that many others had the same idea, notably Facebook, which operates its own experimental journalism project, Facebook Stories.
“If we do too much storytelling ourselves, the fear is that we’re going to take away from our community of storytellers,” Karp says. “They’re already terrific at this.”
Tumble Brag!
Tumblr is growing—fast. The site’s founder, David Karp posted Quantcast’s latest figures on the Tumblr staff blog, saying that its 170 million worldwide visitors had propelled it into the top ten of U.S. blogs. And, like Zuckerberg before him, he pronounced himself “humbled” by the experience.
LIVE-GIFFING THE 2012 DEBATES!
This Wednesday evening marks the first presidential debate for the 2012 American elections. Elevating the discourse as only Tumblr can, we’ll have a crack team of GIF artists cranking out instant animations of the best debate moments, from zingers to gaffes to awkward silences. Flooding the GIF zone will be our own Topherchris, as well as Bobby Finger, Lacey Micallef, and Mr. GIF. And joining us to further enhance our coverage will be Election blog guest editor Adam Gabbatt, whose liveblog at the Guardian will bring you the full stories behind the GIFs
The place to take it all in will be the purpose-built Gifwich live-GIFfing blog. Fair warning: Follow Gifwich at your own risk! After all, once each debate begins, your Dashboard could be flooded with animations on a minute-to-minute basis. Your mileage may vary, but if you prefer to just sample the flow, perhaps check out Gifwich directly during the debate and reblog your favorites piecemeal. You can even sample curated real-time selections from the Guardian’s liveblog or Tumblr’s official Election blog.
All debates (and our Gifwich GIF coverage) begin at 9pm Eastern Time:
- Wednesday, October 3 - Presidential debate on domestic policy
- Thursday, October 11 - Vice-presidential debate on foreign and domestic policy
- Tuesday, October 16 - Presidential town meeting on foreign and domestic policy
- Monday, October 22 - Presidential debate on foreign policy
A historic moment in the evolution of the GIF, which turned 25 this year…
- Like This
- Reblog
- 6,810 notes
Twitter cofounders Biz Stone and Evan Williams today offered a preview of Medium, their new publishing platform.
Collections can be open to everyone, or closed to only a few authors. “Lots of services have successfully lowered the bar for sharing information, but there’s been less progress toward raising the quality of what’s produced,” Williams writes in a blog post introducing the service. Yet he also says that Medium is built so that lots of people can easily contribute, and it’s unclear what kind of controls the curator of each section has over what appears in their collection.
As part of our social media roadmap in the September 2012 issue of Fast Company, we asked social media’s savviest users about their best practices. Use this guide to share their rules, then add yours, and we’ll keep charting a course through this rocky terrain.
Mohney says the big goal of these editorial projects is not only to introduce newcomers to Tumblr, but to make existing users more aware of each other and the work they’re doing. “We’re less interested in profiling people who are already well-known, and more in finding things that are new and interesting or maybe wildly popular within a small niche community. There are niches that may be insanely popular and have thousands or maybe even millions of readers but they don’t generally cross-pollinate with other groups. They exist kind of in parallel. One of the things we’re trying to do is try and break this barrier.”
