Even as Google is catching headlines lately with its I/O conference, a flurry of rumours emerged on Thursday regarding a possible deal between Yahoo and microblogging platform Tumblr.
The Allthingsd websites, citing multiple sources, have confirmed a possible acquisition from Yahoo and added that if the deal is sealed it could reach as high as $1billion.
Yahoo CFO Ken Goldman, speaking earlier this week at the JP Morgan Global Technology conference, had stressed the need for attracting users from the 18-to-24-years-old age group.
"One of our challenges is we have had an aging demographic," said Goldman at the Boston event. "Part of it is going to be just visibility again in making ourselves cool, which we got away from for a couple of years."
The report claims that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has kept an eye on Tumblr ever since she was an executive at Google.
Founded in 2007 by David Carp, Tumblr has 107.8 billion blogs to its credit. It has been recently stepping up its efforts to raise a large funding round that could value the social blogging service at $1 billion.
Reports suggest that Tumblr is interested in strategic investments with Yahoo, which sound similar to Yahoo attempts with France's Dailymotion video service and the deal it is working on with Hulu.
Tumblr depends heavily on user-generated content, largely text photos and videos. It is quite different from both Dailymotion and Hulu. Its traffic was 177 million visitors in April, but the company has not yet figured out a revenue-generating process.
Even as its revenue is modest, Tumblr could be termed one of the few players in the digital world which is well suited for brand advertising. Beyond doubt, any kind of deal with Tumblr would only be of benefit to Yahoo in its effort to be 'cool again'.
