After announcing its deal to acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion, mostly in cash, Yahoo today started to lay out some of the details for how it intends to make use of the property while trying to stick to its promise “not to screw it up.” Expect more advertising by next year as well as more Tumblr content on Yahoo properties, but more of a cautious step as to how Yahoo will deal with some of Tumblr’s more NSFW content.

Here are some of the more interesting details revealed in the call:

What are Tumblr ads going to look like? Tumblr apparently made only $13 million in revenues last year but CEO David Karp apparently thinks the site is “ready” to make more now that it understands its users, according to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. But she also noted that they will be working from a challenged position, not just because of user resistance but because Karp himself has been “skeptical” about online ads.

In the conference call, Mayer made an early reference to how Tumblr would be able to make good use of Yahoo’s advertising technology, in ways that fit Tumblr’s so-far successful, image-based, quick-blogging, youth-oriented format — what she called “native advertising formats.”

As one example, she pointed to an ad format that Yahoo launched at the end of April, in-stream ads that it runs on its news pages. “On Tumblr we feel we can monetize in ways that are meaningful and add to user experience,” she said. She cited the Tumblr dashboard, or as she called it, the inbox for the blogs you follow. “Today Tumblr already does some ads in that feed. We would like to look at that and understand how to introduce more ads where the ads fit the expectations and follow that form and function.” She also noted that Yahoo may possibly work with bloggers to provide ads that will be run with their permission.

On top of this, expect to see more search ads: there are also plans to integrate Yahoo’s search functionality into the site as well. “We think there is a complelling search story,” said Mayer. “Their body is 50b posts and 5 billion posts of original content so search is already vast. We see an opportunity to integrate with search and provide that. That’s one area we are excited by the acquisition.”

Throughout this, a focus on trying to be Tumblr-centric about whatever Yahoo tries to do there. “It’s not a choice between creativity and monetization,” insisted Mayer.

So when are those ads coming? CFO Ken Goldman said that ad revenues from Tumblr will be “modest” this year — the acquisition is not expected to close until the second of of 2013 — but that they will “ramp up” in 2014 “and beyond.” “We do think those revenues will start monetizing materially [and] will contribute to revevenues in 2014 and beyond,” he said on the call, “not just standalone for Tumblr but also incrementally, helping Yahoo to growth.”

Porn? The NSFW, notorious part of Tumblr was never referred to by name, but an analyst did ask about what Yahoo, while courting mainstream brands to market to that attractive Tumblr audience, would do about content that is not “brand safe”. “The richness and breadth of the content… is what makes it more exciting,” enthused Mayer. “In terms of addressing concerns around brand safety we need to have good tools for retargeting.” [Another acquisition, methinks? In any case, no outright announcement that Yahoo intends to get rid of all those sites that Tumblr has more or less accepted into the fold.]

Mayer continued: “Tumblr is now at the point that they do know what it is and what makes sense to monetize in way that is tasteful.” She also mentioned due diligence but also something else, effectively implying that Yahoo will figure out a way of getting around the NSFW content and serving ads where they want them to go, because that’s what the advertisers want: “There are a lot of marketers eager to participate in Tumblr platform and the demographics,” she said.

What does the $1.1 billion “substantially in cash” mean? Goldman noted that it’s effectively an all-cash deal, save for some shares in Yahoo for David Karp. He also noted that Yahoo still has “ample cash” for more acquisitions and investments, to the tune of about $6.2 billion. These will not likely be along the lines of Tumblr in terms of size. “This is an exceptional company and team,” she said of Tumblr. At 300 million monthly unique users, Yahoo is paying about $3.67 per user for the acquisition.

Complementary properties. Mayer made a lot of the fact that Tumblr and Yahoo actually fit “really beautifully together,” like South America and Africa, in her words. In addition to Yahoo skewing older and Tumblr skewing younger, “We are strong on sports, finance and news; Tumblr’s strong on architeture, travel and fashion. We need great tools for content publishing and creation. They have them. Tumblr prides itself as a home for brands. Yahoo is all about brands.”

Tumblr comes to Yahoo. While a lot of the expectation so far has been about how Yahoo may mess up or spiff up or monetize up Tumblr, another theme that emerged during the call was the idea of Tumblr content going out to Yahoo properties — a way of attracting users to Yahoo that may not have gone there before.

“Our strategy is to let Tumblr be Tumblr,” said Mayer. “There are some who will always prefer Tumblr and will never come to Yahoo. [But] as we pull Tumblr content into our news feed and media experiences it will cause them to become that much more interesting and richer and will cause more to come to Yahoo. I imagine engagement will improve as we incorporate that content.”

Flickr. There is a separate news conference today that will likely concentrate on updates to Flickr, but today Mayer appeared to douse out speculation that it will be a move to begin integrating its online photo site with Tumblr in any way: “In terms of how the content of Tumblr evolves it depends on the creators,” Mayer said in answer to a question of what this acquisition will mean for Flickr. “It’s something that we will turn our attention to in the future. It will provide great storage, but we will see how those two cousins should relate to each other.

Image: Tumblr (where else)

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Sprint has decided to get deeper into the social and mobile space, announcing today that it has acquired Handmark and its subsidiary OneLouder. The acquisition is meant to beef up its Pinsight Media+ advertising group, specifically.

Through Handmark, OneLouder has built social apps like Twitter clients Tweetcaster and Slices, and Friendcaster, a Facebook client. The acquisition price hasn’t been made known, but it’s a huge win for the Kansas City tech space, a place that I visited just a few weeks ago.

Sprint hopes that this acquisition will bring a more “entrepreneurial spirit” to its mobile program, hoping to lure developers to use its own advertising platform. Mike Cooley, VP of New Ventures at Sprint shared: “The business, culture and technology they bring will be a huge asset to our business, and ultimately the customers of Pinsight Media+.”

Through building all of its apps, OneLouder found a niche in advertising, having its own team that has worked on the ad platform and used its own apps to test it out. This deal also brings Sprint some strategic partners like CBS, which has a sports app powered by OneLouder. Tying the work that OneLouder has done on its ad platform with Sprint’s customer base should juice its mobile advertising efforts immediately.

The great thing about the acquisition is that Handmark and OneLouder will stay in its current home of Kansas City, serving as an example of what a budding tech hub it really is. Sprint has been trying to get involved with the KC tech crowd, as all of the activity surrounding Google Fiber has inspired companies to be formed and money and time to be spent on building communities and refocusing on making the area attractive to both coasts as an alternative base.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Yahoo has been on an acquisition tear of late, snapping up apps and mobile startups like they’re going out of style. Summly, Astrid, GoPollGo, MileWise, Loki Studios have all been acquired in the last month-and-a-half, while Yahoo simultaneously made a play for a significant stake in French video giant, DailyMotion. With that falling through, rumors have begun to swirl that Yahoo is making a bid for Tumblr, AllThingsD reported yesterday. Is this desperation or genius? Everyone has an opinion, which to Mayer’s credit is not something one has been able to say about Yahoo for a long time.

On Monday, it seems that we may get a better sense of what Yahoo plans to do with all these new acquisitions, as CNBC is reporting that Yahoo will be holding a “product-related” news event on Monday in New York City. Marissa Mayer will reportedly be speaking at the press conference, but that’s all we know about the contents of the event at this point.

Yet again, Yahoo’s CEO shows that she understands how to leverage the press to get the company back into the conversation. This has already led to speculation over what Yahoo will announce, if anything, at the event. Amidst the rumors of its potential billion-dollar bid for Tumblr, some are saying that Yahoo might use the stage to announce yet another acquisition.

Even if a blockbuster acquisition isn’t the focus of the press conference, people will still be talking about Yahoo. At the very least, let’s hope Yahoo begins to explain the strategy behind its acquire-and-shut-down approach and what its “big” plans are for mobile — “touching people’s lives ‘every day’” doesn’t quite do it.

Yahoo to hold a product-related news event in New York City on Monday; CEO Marissa Mayer to speak at event. $YHOO

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There’s consolidation afoot in the peer-to-peer car rental space. San Francisco-based RelayRides, which launched about five years ago and is now available nationwide, has gobbled up fledgling competitor Wheelz. That includes all the assets, IP, and about 10 employees from Wheelz, which launched about a year-and-a-half ago.

The acquisition was announced as RelayRides is seeing record growth in its peer-to-peer car sharing marketplace. It now has cars in more than 1,500 cities across the U.S. since launching a nationally a year ago. Over that time, it’s also seen rental reservation hours and active listings both increase more than 500 percent.

But RelayRides believes that it can accelerate that growth, by bringing on the assets and the technical expertise of the Wheelz team. Unlike RelayRides, which enables car owners to list their cars and hand off keys, Wheelz requires that they install a piece of hardware into their cars. Its proprietary DriveBox technology would then enable renters to unlock the vehicles and get access to them, without having to meet owners to hand off keys.

On the one hand, that gave users more instant access to Wheelz’ inventory of cars. On the other hand, it slowed down the startup’s ability to expand into new markets. At the time of the acquisition, Wheelz was available in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and on some university campuses in California.

For Wheelz, the combination with RelayRides will enable it to bring its technology and user experience to more renters around the country. According to RelayRides CEO Andre Haddad, Wheelz has been working on lower-cost hardware that would make DriveBox technology more widely available to RelayRides listers.

That will enable RelayRides to better reach its most passionate users. Haddad, who was formerly an executive at eBay and Shopping.com, compared RelayRides’ dependence on so-called “super users” to his days at eBay, where about 5 percent of users made up about half of all revenues.

In the same way, RelayRides will be able to leverage Wheelz hardware to facilitate rentals from its own super users. By looking at its inventory of cars and seeing which car owners are most active, RelayRides will be able to pick which are likely to make the most out of that hardware investment. Wheelz founder and CEO Jeff Miller also said there could be an opportunity to have car owners pay for their own equipment.

Either way, the idea is to make car sharing a more seamless experience for both car owners and renters. Installing Wheelz hardware is one way that RelayRides does this. Another way that it’s simplified the rental process is through a partnership with GM and OnStar to let renters gain access to cars by connecting with the automaker’s on-board computer and unlock doors, control and track the vehicles that have been rented.

Over the next several years, Miller expects more OEMs to provide access through OnStar-like integrations. In the meantime, though, the Wheelz hardware will make car sharing a lot more accessible to users who don’t have cars produced by GM or other manufacturers with similar technology.

Wheelz had raised $13.7 million ahead of its launch in San Francisco and L.A. last year. RelayRides, meanwhile, has raised a total of $13 million since being founded in 2008.

While they wouldn’t really disclose the terms of the deal, executives said that Wheelz investors — such as Zipcar and Fontinalis Partners — would become shareholders in the combined entity. As part of the acquisition, RelayRides receive all assets and IP from Wheelz, and 10 employees will be joining the team. Wheelz founder Miller will remain on through the transition, and afterward will serve as an advisor and shareholder in the combined company.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Online real estate company Trulia has announced it plans to acquire real estate SaaS CRM provider Market Leader for approximately $355 million. The SEC filing is here.

Trulia said the combined company will have some 46,000 “premium subscribers” — or more than “any other online real estate marketplace”, likely an indirect reference to rival Zillow.

The pair said the rational for the merger is to create a “combined platform” that covers both house buyers and real estate agents — aka “the entire real estate market, from consumers to brokerages, agents and franchisors” — with Trulia’s front end listing businesses being complemented by Market Leader’s back-end SaaS CRM.

The move is not unexpected, coming after Trulia said it was looking to raise $150 million in follow-on funding in March — with some of the money intended to be used “to acquire or invest in complementary businesses, products, services, technologies, or other assets”.

Announcing the news on its blog, Trulia CEO Pete Flint said:

We are very excited to announce that Trulia has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Market Leader, Inc. (NASDAQ: LEDR, “Market Leader”), a provider of Software as a Service (SaaS)-based software that helps agents generate, manage, engage and market to their contacts and provides enterprise tools for franchisors and brokerages to route leads, evaluate lead efficacy, manage agent performance, and track consumer trends. This transformative deal aims to deliver unprecedented functionality and create more value for franchisors, brokerages, agents and consumers.

Commenting further in a press release, Flint described Market Leader as an “excellent strategic fit”, and talked up “numerous opportunities” for cross-promotion, integrating products & services, and sales teams & business processes:

Market Leader stands alone as a clear leader in the highly fragmented real estate software sector. The company has an existing and proven revenue stream that grew approximately 32% in 2012, the second consecutive year of growth of over 30%. The combination also offers numerous opportunities to cross-promote the two companies’ products, deliver integrated products and services, and leverage complementary sales teams and processes.

On the price-tag, Trulia said the approximately $355 million figure is an “implied price of $11.33 per share” (based on Trulia’s closing share price on Tuesday, May 7, 2013).

Market Leader’s shareholders will receive $6.00 in cash and 0.1553 shares of Trulia’s common stock for each share of Market Leader common stock under the terms of the agreement that was unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both companies. The purchase price represents an 18% premium to Market Leader’s closing share price of $9.61 on Tuesday, May 7, 2013.

Flint added that the acquisition leaves Trulia with “sufficient financial capacity to pursue additional growth initiatives”.

Adding his comments in a statement, Market Leader President and Chief Executive Officer Ian Morris said:

Attracting buyers and sellers and servicing them from research to closing in today’s market requires agents to have the most comprehensive end-to-end solution available on the web and mobile. Market Leader and Trulia have highly complimentary offerings and cultures and we believe this combination will be a big win for our customers, our employees, and our shareholders. The Market Leader team and I are excited to join Trulia and jointly pursue the many growth opportunities before us.

The acquisition is subject to the approval of the holders of a majority of the shares of Market Leader’s common stock, as well as customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals. The transaction is expected to close during the third quarter of 2013.

Market Leader will operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Trulia. The combined company will be headquartered in San Francisco.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Over the last few years, Samsung has been working hard on building technology to improve the communication between its connected TVs and mobile devices, whether they be iOS or Android phones or tablets. Well, the company has acquired MOVL, a startup that should provide even more help in that category.

MOVL is the maker of the Kontrol.tv API platform, which lets developers create apps to connect TVs via the cloud, as well as mobile phones on home networks. The platform was fully launched last fall, after a year-and-a-half that the MOVL team spent building the system.

A representative from MOVL confirmed the acquisition with the following statement:

“In April 2013, two years after inception, MOVL has officially joined forces with Samsung. We are now a part of Samsung Electronics, and we are excited to combine our multi-screen capabilities with Samsung’s scale and innovation in its device ecosystem.”

MOVL has been working on the Samsung connected TV platform for a while now. The startup was one of the first winners of Samsung’s Connected TV developer contests, with its WeDraw app. WeDraw enabled users to draw images through an app on their mobile phones or tablets, and have those illustrations be displayed on a Samsung TV.

But since then, MOVL has become even more ambitious, seeking to not only connect users of Samsung TVs and their mobile devices, but also to provide a singular platform upon which developers could build apps for multiple TV systems. Its Kontrol.tv interface works with both Samsung and Google TV devices, as well as iOS and Android phones and tablets.

But it was working on integration with other smart TV platforms as well. The idea was to provide one connective tissue for all phones and connected TVs, and it had six other platforms in the pipeline for later this year.

It’s not clear if Samsung will continue to allow MOVL to develop for multiple TV platforms, or if it’s just hoping to leverage the development platform for its own devices. The MOVL team has joined Samsung Electronics, and will be working out of the device maker’s San Jose offices. In addition to the startup’s 10 employees, Samsung also gets the technology platform it’s built out, as well as a couple of patents pending.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

At TechCrunch Disrupt 2013 NY, eBay’s CEO John Donahoe talked to Bloomberg’s chief content editor Norm Pearlstine about how the company screens its acquisitions and how he keeps founders from leaving after the acquisition. Since becoming eBay’s CEO, Donahoe said, the company has made about 20 acquisitions. Currently, fifteen of the founders that joined eBay and PayPal after their companies were acquired are still at eBay and most of them are in executive positions.

After the company acquired Zong in 2011, for example, Zong’s founder David Marcus became PayPal’s vice president for mobile. After essentially getting tested in that position, he became the President of PayPal last year. Similarly, when eBay acquired Hunch (also in 2011), its team of co-founders, including Chris Dixon, Tom Pinckney and Matt Gattis joined the company (with Dixon leaving after about a year). Today, this team is in charge of eBay’s homepage.

Donahoe believes that in order to keep founders from leaving, eBay needs to give them the opportunity to grow inside the company. Because of this, he is also most interested in acquiring companies where the management team believes that they can execute their vision inside eBay. “We are always looking for companies that have a strong vision,” Donahoe said. “And then we allow them to innovate at a higher level.” The kind of founders he likes, he said, are “founders come to us and say we founded our company to do x and would like to take it to the next level.”

In his view, this strategy has been a key ingredient to eBay’s and PayPal’s success. Acquisitions, in his view, drive innovation inside a large company like eBay and bringing in founders as executives – and giving them monetary incentives to stay as well, of course – is a key part of this strategy.

As for the details of these incentives, Donahoe noted that “most of the founders make money in the acquisition In some cases the acquisition price is tied to staying for a two-three year period. But yes – we provide incentives to stay. We provide good compensation, but at the end of the day, we need to create a culture where they can realize their visions.” He does, for example, regularly meet with founders to discuss the state of the company. These discussions have, for example, lead to the redesign of the eBay’s homepage. It’s that kind of impact, he believes, that keeps founders at eBay.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Google has announced that it is bidding adieu to the Meebo Bar publishing tool in order to focus on projects like Google+ Sign-In and plug-ins. The Meebo Bar will be retired effective June 6.

Founded in 2005, Meebo was acquired by Google last June for around $100 million. At that time, TechCrunch learned that its product team would use its expertise to help build publisher tools for Google+, with the expectation that existing Meebo properties would be integrated into G+ or closed down.

In fact, many of Meebo’s features, including Meebo Messenger, Sharing on Meebo, MeeboMe, and all of its mobile apps, were largely dismantled after the acquisition, but the Meebo Bar made a reappearance in December, with Google+ sharing options. With the Meebo Bar’s retirement, however, it looks like our original prediction has come true.

The Meebo Bar not only gave Web site developers a way to integrate chat, sharing features and ads, but also a means by which to monetize their Web sites. According to a comScore report from December 2011, before its acquisition by Google, Meebo was getting around 100 million total users per month.

But now it’s the latest target of Google’s spring cleaning–other recently announced shutdowns have included Google Cloud Connect, Google Voice App for BlackBerry and, of course, the much mourned Google Reader. The product retirements are part of the Internet giant’s ongoing efforts to focus on products that not only have a larger amount of users, but also fulfill its core mission of search, social, and ads.

After June 6, the Meebo Bar will stop loading on sites and Google recommends that developers remove the inactive code as part of a “general code housekeeping task.” Check here for more info.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Despite developers grumbling that they would ditch Parse’s mobile app backend service now that it’s been bought by Facebook, Parse CEO Illya Suhkar tells me signups spiked 9.4x and fewer clients are leaving than before. Meanwhile, to calm fears about Facebook spying on Parse developer data, the company issued the statement “We currently have no plans to make any changes to how Parse app data is used.”

The acquisition marks Facebook’s entry into the paid B2B app development services business. However, the acquisition came as a bit of a shock to loyal developers who built over 60,000 apps on Parse’s mobile backend as a service (MBaaS). Complaints I’ve seen centered around Facebook degrading the Parse service, pushing its own social integrations and ad platform too hard, questions about who owns app data hosted on Parse due to language in Facebook’s terms of service, privacy of that app data, and worries about how Facebook might use access to that data for its own benefit.

Many developers claimed they would be moving to other MBaaS platforms. And one competitor, StackMob, built a special importer tool that Parse developers can use to export their app records and import them into these other services. These developers seem to be barking louder than they’re biting, though. Sukhar tells me, “The difference isn’t even statistically significant but, in absolute terms, the number of records exported per day since acquisition announcement is lower than before. Nobody’s using this tool and there is no overall exodus.”

I asked Facebook about the concerns above, and after talking for a while I came away more confident that much of the paranoia about the acquisition is unfounded.

Facebook understands that developers are finicky. The social network already has a spotty record in terms of platform stability. In the past, changes have come hard and fast without enough warning, sometimes causing apps to break. Other times, Facebook’s design or feed changes can crater the traction of apps built on it. Over the last year or so, Facebook has made a serious effort to become more developer-friendly, and are determined not to screw up Parse.

As far as ownership and privacy of data on the Parse platform, some developers may be confusing language in Facebook’s user-facing terms of service, aka the Statement Of Rights And Responsibilities, with its developer-facing Platform Policy. Facebook maintains that it can employ user data to improve its product or target ads, but doesn’t use third-party app data the same way. It seems Facebook’s intention is to run Parse similarly to how it works with apps on its canvas app platform. Essentially, it won’t be prying into private data or using it to inspire its own product development.

Of course Facebook’s “currently have no plans” statement could change in the future. And despite all its mission statements and talk, it’s still a business. But I think Parse can be a powerful tool for Facebook, and even its answer to iOS and Android in some ways, without doing anything too shady. Parse will create a distribution vector for Facebook’s identity and sharing integrations as well as a way to sell ads, but that can be accomplished without being too interruptive to the Parse experience. Scrutiny will be high, though, so Facebook needs to hold true to its word if it wants Parse’s valuable client base to stick around.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Some developers got very angry and threatened to leave mobile app backend platform Parse when it was bought by Facebook yesterday. Hoping to capitalize, competitor StackMob has since released a Parse migration tool that makes it easy for devs to import their Parse apps. It’s a cutthroat game, this game of tech.

When the Parse acquisition was announced, disgruntled developers flocked to Twitter, Hacker News, and our comments reel. Facebook pledged not to screw up the beloved development platform. While it won’t operate independently like Instagram, Facebook’s hands-off approach to the photo sharing app it bought a year ago should instill some confidence. Facebook’s director of product management Doug Purdy said in his statement about the acquisition that “We’ve worked closely with the Parse team and have seen first-hand how important their solutions and platform are to developers. We don’t intend to change this.” On the phone with me he reiterated that Facebook doesn’t intend to mess with a good thing.

Still, developers’ complaints I read centered on two fears: 1. That Facebook would degrade the Parse service, potentially by promoting its own social integrations and app install ads too hard, and 2. That Facebook would spy on data coming into Parse, including what types of content people chose not to post to the social network.

Wasting little time, Stackmob launched an auto-importer for developers looking to move their apps elsewhere and published a blog post touting its advantages over Parse. StackMob CEO Ty Amell tells me the company had already been tinkering with a Parse importer, but when the acquisition was announced, it finished it up and made it accessible yesterday alongside a step-by-step guide. Then today the company began offering a Python script that turns the multi-step process into a single step.

Amell explained to me, “Over the last few months we’ve seen an increase in people coming over from Parse. Once we heard they’d been acquired, we knew there was going to be a lot of backlash and uncertainty from mobile developers. Facebook has a history of monetizing other people’s users, and charging through ads and other ways to access users. Parse not being independent any more is a pretty large concern for developers.”

He says developers had two main questions about the acquisition. 1. Do developers still own their data? 2. What rights to privacy do developers have, and how will Facebook use their data? Amell says “Facebook has some pretty aggressive terms of service. ” However, most of those terms refer to user data, not developer app data, so Amell may be confused.

Overall I think he’s blowing the issue out of proportion for his company’s gain. Developers are right to have questions about what will happen now that Parse is a division of Facebook, but that doesn’t mean they need to migrate away from the platform immediately. Facebook may eventually need to add new terms to its legal documents to cover its new paid B2B services arm, though, which could clarify exactly what will happen with Parse data.