Hasta La Gadget!

Could it be that the recent Yahoo acquisition of Tumblr rubbed some people the wrong way? Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said that they wouldn’t screw it up, but sometimes you can’t make everyone happy. It turns out that Tumblr’s creative director and one of the company’s first employees, Jacob Bijani, is stepping down from his post.

Bijani doesn’t mention the reason for his leave, but he says that he’s “proud” of the work that Tumblr has done, and it was “a privilege to contribute to something beloved by so many.” He says he’s excited about the future of Tumblr and is looking forward to seeing what’s next for the company and the product, noting that it will most likely “be nothing short of incredible.”

Could it be the first of many big departures for Tumblr? While Tumblr CEO David Karp seems to be all on board with the acquisition, many employees may not feel the same way. I mean, we wouldn’t be surprised if every Tumblr employee was on board with it, but we’re certainly a bit surprised to see that one of the original employees is heading out.

Bijani says that there’s still a lot more that he wants to accomplish, mentioning that he has “about a dozen different projects” on the back burner, so it seems he isn’t quitting his profession, but the timing of the departure is a curious one, and if we had a portion of that cool $1.1 billion, we don’t blame Bijani for taking “some time off to digest the last few years.”

VIA: Valleywag

Tumblr creative director quits after Yahoo acquisition is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week Tumblr has begun to roll out sponsored posts beyond their mobile application environment. While back on the 22nd of April Tumblr brought advertisements to smartphones, users working with their desktop computers and browsing their Dashboard with a web browser will see the same thing. Because the Yahoo buyout of Tumblr was announced so very recently, it’s likely this move was scheduled well ahead of said acquisition.

As Tumblr states today, it’s been one year since the first sponsored post appeared on Tumblr Radar. This program has since garnered “more than 10 million likes and reblogs” in the months between there and here, and Tumblr is glad to usher in said content to their main console.

Posts that are sponsored will be appearing to regular users the same way a normal piece of content would. In an effort to keep Tumblr as visually pleasing and “cool” as it has been, sponsors create advertisements in the same manner a regular Tumblr user would. This means the same title, image, placement format and everything.

Though these posts will appear in user feeds the same way they would any other post, a shining dollar sign will appear in the upper right-hand corner. As this dollar sign is a light gray and meant to be unobtrusive, these posts will “simply blend in”, as Tumblr hopes they will.

Does this sound like a positive move to you? If you’ve been using the standard Tumblr app on your iPhone or Android device, have you noticed paid posts yet? They’ve been there for a few weeks!

SOURCE: Tumblr

Tumblr Sponsored Posts hit web with dollar-sign icon is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Singapore isn’t necessarily known for its generous media freedoms, but the Southeast Asian city-state is planning to tighten the reigns even further next month. Beginning June 1st, any online news outlet with more than 50,000 unique monthly visitors within Singapore that also reports on the country at least once each week will need to obtain an operating license from the Media Development Authority. According to a press release, the objective of such a policy, which already covers print publications, is to “provide greater clarity” when it comes to text and visual media the government will not allow to be published, such as “content that undermines racial or religious harmony.” The agency’s release lists a total of 10 online publications that will be affected by the new policy, including sg.news.yahoo.com, businesstimes.com.sg and straitstimes.com. According to a Reuters report, blogs are currently excluded, though we could see stricter regulation on that front in the future.

Filed under: Internet, Alt

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Source: AsiaOne, Reuters

After we recently heard about the possibility of Yahoo buying out Hulu, more information is surfacing revealing that Yahoo is said to be paying somewhere between $600 million and $800 million for the streaming service. This range is based on different options that Yahoo has laid out for Hulu, including the length of licenses and how much control content creators will still have.

Rumors of Yahoo buying Hulu come shortly after the company bought blogging service Tumblr for a cool $1.1 billion, as well as purchasing a handful of smaller startups, including online gaming platform PlayerScale. With newly-appointed CEO Marissa Mayer at the helm, Yahoo has practically pulled a complete 180, and the Mayer is looking to turn things around for the dying company.

As more and more companies are getting into the television and movie streaming business, Yahoo has been one of the bigger companies to remain stagnant in that area, but it seems they be doing things the easy way by purchasing Hulu and calling it a day. It’s one of the most popular streaming services on the internet, right up there with Netflix.

Hulu was originally put up for sale back in 2011 for a whopping $2 billion, but after no one was interested in paying that much, Hulu eventually took down the offer and continued on with their day-to-day. However, after failing to purchase YouTube (for which Google won the prize), it seems Yahoo is looking to take another stab at a video streaming service.

According to sources close to the situation, the negotiation for the Yahoo Hulu acquisition mostly deals with the control and price of the content, rather than just negotiating a simple price for the Hulu service itself. The one question many people are probably asking, however, is if Hulu is worth $800 million. Yahoo paid over $1 billion to Tumblr, but should a popular video streaming service receive more cash?

SOURCE: AllThingsD

Yahoo Hulu acquisition rumored for $800m bid is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Rumor has it that Yahoo has submitted an offer to buy a stake in video streaming site Hulu. The value of this offer is not yet known.

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