As Tumblr users cope with news of a new overlord, many are voicing both concern and annoyance at the $1.1 billion deal. The most vocal are getting their message heard and it’s spreading across Tumblr as well as other social networks, but it’s not enough to make Yahoo or Tumblr concerned.
WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg noticed something Sunday after the rumors of a done deal started surfacing:
“Imports have actually spiked on the rumors even though it’s Sunday: normally we import 400-600 posts an hour from Tumblr, last hour it was over 72,000.”
While some are saying this is just the beginning of the end, the reality is that it’s such a minor blip on their radar that they probably didn’t even notice. If they did notice, they were probably pleased that the spike wasn’t bigger. With around 75 million posts per day, they aren’t in any danger of becoming irrelevant as a result of defections.
More importantly, the news has rejuvenated both companies. Despite the growth that Tumblr has seen in the past three years, it has not stayed at the top-of-mind buzz level of other social sites like Pinterest and Instagram. This obviously brings them back to where they were when they were the next big thing. .For Yahoo, it’s a sign that they have the clout to make stuff happen (there’s a reason why it was a cash deal) and the foresight to go after the youthful crowd, something that Tumblr dominates.
As the smoke clears, the most important thing both companies should do is to keep the status quo for as long as possible, perhaps indefinitely. They have promised that they won’t make major changes. If anything, they should make changes to other services to make them fall more in line with Tumblr, including mail and Flickr. If they can keep this momentum going, both companies have the opportunity to make out like bandits through this, the biggest deal with a social site so far this year.
