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Yahoo! in Talks to Acquire Tumblr: Deal Could Reach As High As $1 Billion (Adweek)
Is Marissa Mayer about to make a game-changing acquisition? It appears so. Yahoo! is in serious talks with Tumblr to acquire the social blogging site, according to multiple sources familiar with the talks. While its revenue is modest, Tumblr has positioned itself as one of the few players in the digital ad world that is well-suited for brand advertising. And Tumblr is also the domain of the young, cool and creative crowd — not currently a Yahoo! sweet spot. AllThingsD Earlier this week, Yahoo! CFO Ken Goldman spoke at JPMorgan’s Global Technology conference and underscored the need for the aging Silicon Valley Internet giant to attract more users from the coveted 18-to-24-years-old age bracket. Along with more marketing, he explicitly said Yahoo! needed to be “cool again.” The Verge Since taking control of Yahoo!, Mayer has pursued a string of acquisitions, including Summly, Astrid, Jybe and others. In addition to the failed Dailymotion acquisition, the company has also been rumored to be looking at Hulu, although Mayer has previously said that the company is shopping for smaller targets valued in the $100 million range.

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At 4:02 a.m. this morning in the blog “Yodel Anecdotal,” company CEO Marissa Mayer cut the ribbon on a redesigned Yahoo home page. The biggest navigation change involves the way news stories are listed below the familiar slide-show panel window:

Since streams of information have become the paradigm of choice on the Web, we’re introducing a newsfeed with infinite scroll, letting you experience a virtually endless feed of news articles. Whether you are a sports fanatic or entertainment buff, you can easily customize your newsfeed to your interests.

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Being ranked right behind Google’s Larry Page and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is a position any 37-year-old new mom would envy. For Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, it’s just the latest bit of remarkable news in a truly remarkable year.

The former Google exec is number three on Fortune magazine’s just-released “40 Under 40” hit list. For the accompanying sidebar profile, reporter Patricia Sellers talked to dozens of friends, colleagues and acquaintances about Yahoo’s fourth chief executive in five years (and youngest leader of any Fortune 500 company):

“When Marissa became captain of the pompom squad, she wasn’t in with that clique of girls, but she won them over in three ways,” recalls Abigail Garvey Wilson, Mayer’s best friend from childhood. “First, sheer talent. Marissa could choreograph a great routine. Second, hard work. She scheduled practices lasting hours to make sure everyone was synchronized. And third, fairness. With Marissa in charge, the best dancers made the team.”

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Hours after news broke today of Marissa Mayer’s surprising appointment as CEO of Yahoo, Fortune’s Patricia Sellers shares a shocking, exclusive extra detail. Mayer is pregnant, due to deliver a boy on October 7:

Mayer’s husband is Zachary Bogue, a lawyer who traded practicing law to invest in “big-data startups,” she says…

Mayer first disclosed to the Yahoo board that she is pregnant in late June, in a meeting with Michael Wolf, a member of the board’s four-person CEO search committee. A meeting with the search committee followed, and then Mayer met with the full board last Wednesday. None of the Yahoo directors, she says, revealed any concern about hiring a pregnant chief executive. “They showed their evolved thinking,” says Mayer, who got the phone call last Thursday that she was the board’s choice to be CEO.

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Among the quartet of Hollywood “trades,” none had been keeping a closer eye on the Yahoo! CEO sweepstakes than TheWrap. Sharon Waxman wrote several articles about this topic, working her extensive showbiz contacts. But she and media reporter Lucas Shaw today were as surprised as everyone else by the appointment to the post of Google VP Marissa Mayer:

Choosing Mayer over Levinsohn appears like another win for technology over media at one of Silicon Valley’s biggest companies… She holds a master’s degree in computer science from Stanford – a real one – as well as a bachelor’s degree in symbolic systems.

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