By Claire West
Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) and Tumblr announced today that they have reached a definitive agreement for Yahoo! to acquire Tumblr.
Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business and David Karp will remain CEO. Yahoo! made a promise as part of the agreement 'not to screw it up' and say that the product, service and brand will continue to be defined and developed separately with the same Tumblr irreverence, wit, and commitment to empower creators.
With more than 300 million monthly unique visitors and 120,000 signups every day, Tumblr is one of the fastest-growing media networks in the world.
Tumblr sees 900 posts per second and 24 billion minutes spent on site each month. On mobile, more than half of Tumblr's users are using the mobile app and do an average of 7 sessions per day.
Its popularity and engagement among creators, curators and audiences of all ages brings a significant new community of users to the Yahoo! network. The combination of Tumblr+Yahoo! is expected to grow Yahoo!'s audience by 50 percent to more than a billion monthly visitors, and to grow traffic by approximately 20 percent.
