Yahoo's board has agreed to acquire blogging site Tumblr for USD 1.1 billion in an all-cash deal, people familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal. Tumblr's board has approved the deal as well, according to one of the people. The agreement could be announced on 20 May.
Tumblr is popular with younger adults, in contrast with the older customer base of Yahoo users. Tumblr is also growing more rapidly on smartphones. Tumblr was valued at USD 800 million when it raised USD 85 million of venture capital in late 2011. The blogging site is owned by founder and CEO David Karp, as well as venture investors including Union Square Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Spark Capital.
Tumblr has 175 employees and over 108 million blogs. It had almost 117 million unique visitors globally in March, up on around 58 million a year earlier, according to ComScore.
