Yahoo confirms $1.1 bn Tumblr acquisition

Internet giant Yahoo has confirmed plans to buy social blogging site Tumblr for around $1.1 billion.

The site, which is reported to have more than 300 million monthly unique visitors, will continue to operate as a standalone entity and David Karp will stay on as its chief executive.

"The product, service and brand will continue to be defined and developed separately with the same Tumblr irreverence, wit and commitment to empower creators," said Yahoo in a statement.

Reports linking the two firms have begun to circulate in recent days, but the deal was only confirmed earlier this afternoon.

Yahoo has carried out nearly a dozen acquisitions since handing over the company reins to former Google exec Marissa Mayer last July.

Further to this, since joining the company as CEO, Mayer has also taken to steps to wind down a series of long standing Yahoo services, as reported by IT Pro here .

"Tumblr's tremendous popularity and engagement among creators, curators and audiences of all ages brings a significant new community of users to the Yahoo network," the statement continued.

"The combination of Tumblr and Yahoo could grow Yahoo's audience by 50 per cent to more than a billion monthly visitors, and could grow traffic by approximately 20 per cent."

In a blog post, published via Tumblr, Mayer said the site's users will be able to draw on Yahoo's search capabilities to share their content across the web.

"In terms of working together, Tumblr can deploy Yahoo's personalisation technology and search infrastructure to help its users discover creators, bloggers and the content they'll love," wrote Mayer.

"In turn, Tumblr brings 50 billion blog posts (and 75 million more arriving each day) to Yahoo's media network and search experiences," she added.

She also assured Tumblr users that the company has no plans to "screw it up".

The deal is expected to closed during the second half of the year and is subject to customary closing conditions.