Is there a backlash against the Yahoo acquisition of Tumblr already?!

   Wow that didn't take very long at all! It seems that there might be a backlash against the acquisition already! Matt Mullenweg has posted on his blog that WordPress have seen as many as 72,000 blog migrations from Tumblr to WordPress in recent hours.

   That's a huge difference compared to the standard rate of between 400 and 600 per hour, but it's not uncommon when services such as Instagram were acquired by Facebook for there to be a huge migration of users and a backlash in general to the purchase. 

   Mullenweg added that:

 "News like this, whether from a friend or a competitor, is always bittersweet: I’m curious to see what the creative folks behind Tumblr do with their new resources, both personal and corporate, but I’m more interested to know what they would have done over the next 5-10 years as an independent company." 

   We'll have to wait for the longer term changes to see if the Yahoo deal will be detrimental to the platform. Lets hope that this isn't MySpace all over again!

MattMullenweg Blog via AllThingsD.

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Yahoo drop $1.1 billion on Tumblr!

   The rumours may have popped up last night that Yahoo was planning to buy Tumblr, but today it's official! Yahoo have just dropped $1.1 billion to take control of the popular social blogging tool Tumblr!The agreement will see Yahoo take ownership of Tumblr later in this year!

   As part of the agreement Tumblrs's CEO David Karp will be kept on and as Yahoo said, as:

 "We promise not to screw it up.  Tumblr is incredibly special and has a great thing going.  We will operate Tumblr independently.  David Karp will remain CEO.  The product roadmap, their team, their wit and irreverence will all remain the same as will their mission to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve.  Yahoo! will help Tumblr get even better, faster." 

   Yahoo haven't wasted any time since announcing the deal with Yahoo's blog now taking centre stage on the URL yahoo.tumblr.com. As an extension Yahoo added that, "On many levels, Tumblr and Yahoo couldn't be more different, but, at the same time, they couldn't be more complimentary. Yahoo is the internet's original media network. Tumblr is the internet's fastest-growing media frenzy."

   Yahoo also said that they hope their audience will grow by up to 50% as part of the deal and they expect traffic to be up 20%! Tumblr will naturally have a few of Yahoo's search features added in and of course it'd be a missed opportunity if Yahoo didn't put a few of their ads on the platform too wouldn't it?

   Tumblr's CEO David Karp expressed just how excited he was, even going as far as saying 'elated' to be  under Yahoo's ownership. Karp said that:

 "We're elated to have the support of Yahoo and their team who share our dream to make the internet the ultimate creative canvas... Tumblr gets better faster with more resources to draw from." 

   This deal is set to be beneficial for both parties and the reaction on social media sites has been relatively positive. Our highly critical Twitter feed has been relatively positive and The Verge's Matt Brian even said:

I honestly believe Yahoo can do something good with Tumblr. It’s new mobile and social focus will work, if done right.
— Matt Brian (@m4tt) May 20, 2013

   Ohhh and one last thing, this is one of the only acquisitions which has ever had an animated GIF released to show it off! Check it out at the GIF below!
Via YahooBlog and TheVerge.

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23/08/2012

Is HTC planning a wholesale price cut to regain market share?!

   Everyone knows that HTC prides themselves on high quality, well made devices! It was this belief that made HTC one of the most popular Android manufacturers up until the last year. Something happened then, no one really knows why though. Perhaps it was good devices that weren't particularly inspiring or perhaps Samsung and Apple have just been a completely relentless march!

   Either way today's rumours have suggested there will be a fightback from HTC! And what better way to get some mind share and some more market share back too than a price cut! That's exactly what the Chinese rumour mill has blurted out today! Apparently these cuts will run deep too; all of their current One Series devices will reportedly get discounted, as will the upcoming Windows Phone 8 devices. 

   This is actually a fantastic plan from the company, people will be swayed away from Samsung phones and hopefully people will get HTC-envy again!

In other news:

• Samsung has announced that work on Bada will now end and Tizen phones will be pushed back into 2013! There's no official line on why yet but the company may just prefer to focus on securing Android market share!
• Facebook has announced that their data grows by 500 Terabytes daily! That is a lot of new servers that they'll be buying!
• Not too long ago Twitter cut Instagram off from the friend finding service and now a second major service has been cut off by twitter. Blogging platform Tumblr has had its friend finding privileges ended by twitter.
• Sony Mobile announced today that it would be restructuring operations and development sites in Tokyo, Japan, Lund, Sweden, and Beijing, China. That includes lay offs of up to a thousand people in Sweden!
• Qualcomm have announced that they'll be collaborating with LG as they gear up to release their Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core processor. This "global device" that the pair are working on will include an Adreno 320 GPU along with support for "higher HD resolution displays".The whole thing will rock 4G LTE connectivity and will be showing up in Korea in September to begin with before coming to the rest of the world thereafter.
• Everyone knows game piracy on PC is a big issue but according to outspoken Ubisoft the piracy rate on their games is somewhere in the region of 93-95% of the games users!

And finally, for the first time in 25 years Microsoft has updated their company's logo. The fruits of the 25 years of work looks like this!

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