Yahoo rumoured to be buying Tumblr for £715m
Yahoo could be about to buy Tumblr, and it's rumoured to be improving its Flickr photo-sharing service while it's at it.
Yahoo is holding an event on Monday to "share something special", and a couple of rumours have started swirling about exactly what that could be.
A $1.1 billion (£715 million) buyout of Tumblr could be on the cards. (You know Tumblr, home to Kim Jong-Il Looking At Things.) "Sources close to the situation" have told AllThingsD the Yahoo board will meet tonight (at a top secret nuclear bunker, I'm guessing) to decide whether to approve the move.
Apparently Yahoo was planning on investing in the site, but has upgraded it to an outright acquisition. CEO Marissa Mayer is convinced that buying Tumblr will be "the stake in the ground of what her strategy is going forward for Yahoo," according to the sources.
In other words, Yahoo wants to attract younger people, with more user-generated content of the likes pioneered by Tumblr. If the deal goes ahead, it'll be the biggest Mayer has overseen since taking over as head of Yahoo.
That deal is far from concrete, however. It's unlikely Yahoo would arrange an event without some news already to announce, so what else does it have cooking? Citing a person familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reckons Mayer will unveil updates to its Flickr photo-sharing service.
Mayer has spent a lot of time revamping Yahoo's most popular services like its home page, email client and weather service, as well as culling less successful products like its BlackBerry app. Rejigging Flickr could help it compete with the wealth of other photo-sharing services out there, like the Facebook-owned Instagram.
Could Yahoo be about to give Flickr some social networking skills? The event is scheduled for late on Monday our time, so keep it CNET UK for all the news as it happens.
Do you think Yahoo should buy Tumblr? And what features would you like to see added to Flickr? Let me know in the comments, or on our Facebook page.