The way the article is phrased (though we must remember it's third-hand at best) leads me to believe the strategy may be to go the other direction, to meld core Yahoo strengths (whatever that may be) into Tumblr. That is, integrate Yahoo offerings into Tumblr rather than the other way around.
Yes, because they can find the billion offered elsewhere, right?
I call BS. Tumblr would accept even if Yahoo wants to turn it into Zombo.com.
iirc yahoo's strongest services are sports, news, finance, and mail. these would all seem to disrupt the feel and information purity of tumble if done carelessly.
maybe encouraging sharing/linking and extrapolating on yahoo assets by means of great tumble integration into yahoo services and vice versa could benefit both yahoo and tumblr users?
I think we're all inured a bit to site shutdowns through acquisitions, meaning that acq's have taken on a largely negative set of assumptions, but it doesn't have to be that way.
You say that "it doesn't have to be that way" w.r.t. acquisitions having a negative impact on an acquired service, and I agree that in theory, there really is no way the product has to be damaged. But there are agendas and incentives, and more often than not, we have seen first hand that the acquired products do get damaged. Maybe we can get lucky at times like Youtube, but our scar tissue didn't form from nothing.
1. Stupid pre-rolls everywhere.
2. DMCA takedowns / country restrictions.
3. Weak community.
4. Nagging for Google+ integration.
The UX is pretty horrible. They just get away because content is king and are 1st movers. Nowadays I increasingly find more, or higher quality, stuff on Vimeo though.
Just got to hope they can do a good job of it. I have no particular attachment to Yahoo!, but the sentimental side of me would like to see some old giants make worthy comebacks.