I WAS GRADING a handful of third level social media exams when Yahoo! sealed the deal to buy Tumblr. My dashboard lit up with dozens of people screaming.
What's more significant than Yahoo spending real cash in the acquisition is the logic behind the purchase. Tumblr is a big social network with 108 million blogs and 50.7 billion posts. Some of our best students tumble more than they Facebook. Tumblr has a diehard user base. Its blogging platform is the easiest one I've ever used. And its image-laden posts are a honeypot for Yahoo's photo recognition software. When one of our female student makes a Tumblr post with a picture of her new purse, dozens of her friends want the details. All Yahoo! has to do is to offer up a "see more" link to a shopping zone and the clicks will follow.
Online shopping is an internet success story. People buy from well-styled photos. If Yahoo! can match photos to sales channels, the Tumblr acquisition will be worth a lot more than one Instagram purchase.
Bernie Goldbach teaches creative multimedia for the Limerick School of Art and Design. He's topgold on many good social networks.
