NEW YORK, NY, May 20 (DPI) – Tech analysts say amateur pornography – in effect, millions of adult photo blogs — has driven the modest growth of the social-blogging platform Tumblr, acquired today by Yahoo! for $1.1 billion.
CNet, Bloomberg and other sources report that amateur pornography is a key driver for Tumblr, whose blogs reportedly received 300 billion unique page views in April; while a small percentage of all of Tumblr’s blogs are adult in nature, about half of all viewers are lured by adult images, according to independent estimates. Moreover, Tumblr’s viewers are mostly age 25 and under, according to the principle firms.
Tumblr, launched in 2007 by a young New York programmer named David Karp, was backed in recent years by $125 million in venture financing; the company brought in $13 million in revenues in 2012 – almost all from digital advertising — with more than $25 million in expenses and 175 employees. As such, the $1.1 billion purchase price may look excessive for some time.
Yet according to Cnet and other sources, Yahoo was motivated in part by the blogs’ youthful audience of readers and viewers.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-20/beyond-gifs-and-porn-the-yahoo-tumblr-deal-.html
Press releases and many press reports make no mention of the adult nature of most of Tumblr’s user generated content. But given both the proliferation of easy-access amateur pornography on Tumblr blogs, and the reported age of its viewing audiences, the acquisition poses some unreported business and political risks for Yahoo.
Tumblr’s features are somewhat unique among blogging platforms – competitors include WordPress — since Tumblr’s pages propagate images quickly, and allow easy linking to similar content and users of the same content.
There was some early backlash Monday among users of Tumblr that the blogs would be modified in some way — and threaten privacy, among other concerns — but Yahoo tried to allay fears among users:
Tumblr doesn’t provide user details of the content and specific nature of its blogs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumblr