Official Weibo: http://weibo.com/u/3476904471
前一段时间雅虎关掉了号称终生免费的邮箱，本来想做这个专题的，可是相关文章评论并不多，反而在搜索过程中发现了前一段时间雅虎花巨额收购Tumblr的一些文章，所以做个专题啦，也脑补一个收购案，话说雅虎的这个新上任的CEO是个女强人，事业家庭力挽狂澜的那种，如果大家感兴趣的话下周我们可以看看她的一些过去未来，结合她呆过的google神马的~
阅读建议：可以先做article2，这个是VOA的新闻，可以补点背景资料，难度也不大，转回来做speaker，就不用担心基本的背景不了解而听不懂啦，希望大家ENJOY~
Part I: Speaker
Article 1:
Yahoo To Buy Tumblr In An Attempt To Revitalize Itself
[Rephrase 1]
[Dialog, 1:29]
Source: http://public.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/me/2013/05/20130520_me_07.mp3
Part II: Speed Article 2: Yahoo Buying Tumblr for $1.1 Billion
[Time 2]
Yahoo Inc said it is buying blogging service Tumblr for $1.1 billion cash, giving the struggling Internet pioneer a much-needed platform in social media to reach a younger generation of users.
The deal, announced Monday, is a bold bet by Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer to revitalize the company by co-opting a Web property with strong visitor traffic, but little revenue.
Yahoo made clear it was sensitive to concerns that it might damage Tumblr by making it less irreverent or more corporate.
“Per the agreement and our promise not to screw it up, Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business,” Yahoo said in a statement.
The acquisition, which will use up about a fifth of Yahoo's $5.4 billion in cash and marketable securities, is the largest by far since Mayer took the reins in July with the goal of reversing a long decline in Yahoo's business and Web traffic.
Analysts said Yahoo appeared to be overpaying for a business that might not contribute to revenue for years, but said that Yahoo had to do something to plug a hole in its social media efforts.
RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Mahaney called it a “long-shot/long-term investment” but one that fits into Mayer's turnaround strategy.
“Yahoo's fundamentals have been subpar for numerous years, in part because of the company's missing presence in Social and Mobile. Tumblr may help Yahoo develop that presence,” Mahaney said in a note.
Tumblr is one of the Web's most popular hubs of so-called user-generated content, drawing young people who use the platform to post pictures and text. Tumblr has more than 100 million blogs in its network, ranging from “White Men Wearing Google Glass” to housing-focused “The Worst Room.”
Though Yahoo remains one of the Web's most popular destinations, it has seen its revenue shrink in recent years as consumers and advertisers favor rivals such as Google and Facebook. The deal is expected to increase Yahoo's audience by 50 percent.
[327 words]
[Time 3]
Rich premium
While Tumblr is certainly popular - it has tens of millions of monthly unique visitors - analysts questioned what kind of contribution it will make to Yahoo revenue, since advertising on the site is in its nascent stages.
Media reports have pegged Tumblr's 2012 revenue at $13 million. The privately held company, based in Manhattan, does not disclose its financial results.
Yahoo expects that Tumblr will help boost revenue by 2014, Ken Goldman, Yahoo's chief financial officer, said on a call with analysts. He did not provide specific numbers.
“Even if revenue was $100 million, it means Yahoo paid 10 times revenue,” said BGC Financial analyst Colin Gillis. “Ten times is what you pay to date the belle of the ball. It's on the outer bands of M&A.”
Yahoo could quickly boost Tumblr's revenue by combining the website with its own sales force, said Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser. Loading Tumblr up with banner ads risks alienating its users, however, and probably wouldn't provide a significant lift to Yahoo's overall revenue, he said.
“It's not clear that this deal will be favorable from a return-on-capital perspective,” Wieser said. “One billion [dollars] for one company is a big bet.”
Gillis and Wieser were contacted on Sunday after the deal was reported by the online publication All Things D.
Mayer, on the conference call, described the Tumblr deal as an exception and said Yahoo was not necessarily planning lots of similarly sized deals.
Yahoo is one of several companies that have coughed up considerable money for buzz-worthy start-ups that hold promise. Facebook bought the popular social media photo site Instagram for $1 billion last year. In 2006, Google paid $1.6 billion for YouTube.
Shares of Yahoo rose as much as 2 percent in early trading Monday, but later fell back. They were up 18 cents to $26.70 in late-morning dealings. Through Friday's close, the shares had risen 70 percent since Mayer became CEO.
[326 words]
[Time 4]
Image issues
One question Yahoo may have to address is Tumblr's reputation as a home for pornographic blogs. At one point in 2009, about 80 percent of Tumblr's top sites had something to do with adult content. Today that number is closer to 5 percent, according to Quantcast data, but the image lingers.
Mayer said on the call that Yahoo's targeting tools would allow advertisers to zero in on specific demographics and content.
One area where Yahoo plans to ramp up advertising: Tumblr's dashboard, the main landing point, akin to a newsfeed.
Dealing with that and other issues may fall to David Karp, 26, who founded Tumblr in 2007 and will remain CEO.
Karp, a self-taught programmer who left high school in favor of home schooling, did not take part in Mayer's conference call. Media reports have suggested his take in the billion-dollar sale would top $200 million.
In a 2012 interview with The Guardian, Karp seemed to be less interested in money than in Tumblr's prominence.
“There are a lot of rich people in the world. There are very few people who have the privilege of getting to invent things that billions of people use,” he said.
[199 words]
Source: http://www.voanews.com/content/yahoo-buying-tumblr-for-more-than-one-billion-dollars/1664655.html
Article 3: 5 Questions: Why Yahoo Hopes Tumblr Will Expand Its'Coolness'
[Time 5]
Yahoo, the languishing tech pioneer, officially unveiled its acquisition of social blogging platform Tumblr on Monday. The $1.1 billion purchase by Yahoo could mean a whole world of things for both of the Internet companies, as well as for Yahoo chief executive -- and former Google executive -- Marissa Mayer.
We spoke with Rebecca Lieb, a research analyst of digital advertising and media for the Altimeter Group and Steven Levy, a writer for Wired, about the deal and Yahoo's strategy behind it.
Where does Tumblr fit into the Yahoo strategy?
There are handful of things Yahoo wants from this buy, according Rebecca Lieb, a research analyst of digital advertising and media for the Altimeter Group. They want to vastly expand the Yahoo audience, Lieb told the PBS NewsHour. "Not just eyeballs, but expanding into a demographic, the millennials, the 20-somethings."
Yahoo was once a relevant Internet body, Lieb said:
It very badly needs to re-invent itself, to be, if not cool at least relevant again ... And Tumblr brings an elusive component of coolness. One of Mayer's big challenges is keeping it cool when it is owned by a less cool corporate entity.
Steven Levy, a writer for Wired, dubs Tumblr an "image-enhancer" for Yahoo. Tumblr provides Yahoo with a way to increase its content output by repurposing user-generated material, Levy said, adding that the site elevates a platform already loved by so many people. "The technological success for Tumblr, and now Yahoo, will be teasing content out of people for free."
What does the Tumblr experience say about the future role of mobile?
Lieb said that mobile is increasingly about imagery and cites Facebook's revamp and focus on images after its acquisition of the social photo sharing tool Instagram. "A picture is worth a thousand words," she said. "People don't type about their dinner. They upload photos." Yahoo's pick-up of Tumblr could mean even more change in the future of Yahoo's mobile strategy visually.
While Yahoo has seen significant plays on mobile, Lieb said the company, along with Facebook and Google, has yet to find the winning formula yet. "No one has won," she said. "The battle is just beginning."
[361 words]
[Time 6]
Why was there negative reaction among Tumblr users?
"Tumblr has a very indie feel to it," said Levy of what some have called the "hipster blogging service."
The idea of a conglomerate led by a former Gooogler taking hold of that content, he added, could be disturbing. The social website revolt is a familiar tale. You can see some of those reactions here.
Levy also noted that pre-Melissa Mayer, the Web pioneer had a "miserable reputation of taking on new companies and doing nothing with them." (Note Yahoo's 2005 acquisitions of Flickr and del.icio.us.)
Is there any way to tell how difficult it will be for Yahoo to make money with Tumblr?
"The model Yahoo doesn't want you to look at is NewsCorp buying Myspace, and the model they want you to look at is Google buying YouTube," said Levy. The strategy there? "Google made the smart decision to not call YouTube Google Video."
On Yahoo's newfound relationship with Tumblr, Lieb's advice is to be hands-off and leave it alone. "If Yahoo goes in and makes radical changes, the audience will defect." But Yahoo can build Tumblr's advertising model, Lieb said. "At the same time, Tumblr will bring a new form of non-advertising," or native content marketing to Yahoo.
Content marketing is less alienating to the young millennial audience Yahoo is courting, signaled in this acquisition, said Lieb.
Are these tech sector deals still running ahead of their real value or are they starting to calm down?
While the jury's still out on the $1 billion Facebook-Instagram deal, YouTube surely helped Google, both Lieb and Levy agree. But these acquisitions are not the type that are expected to break even by the next quarter or even by the end of the next fiscal year, said Lieb.
"Generally these mergers don't work," said Levy, noting that for every Google success met by companies like Android and YouTube, there are ten other companies that acquired and had failures.
[326 words]
Source: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/05/5-questions-why-yahoo-hopes-tumblr-will-expand-its-coolness.html
Part III: Obstacle
Article 4: Yahoo, Tumblr, and the Loyalty Factor [Paraphrase 7]
As Yahoo goes through with its acquisition of Tumblr, CEO Marissa Mayer may have a user rebellion on her hands. The early reaction fromthe Tumblr community is not encouraging — blogs lit up with memes of crying babies and apocalyptic rants upon the announcement of the news. The uproar was bolstered by stories critical of Yahoo's earlier acquisitions, and fueled by rumors that Yahoo may introduce advertising to the popular blogging site.
Amidst this uproar, Mayer can take a page from the book of Albert Hirschman, one of the most original thinkers on political economy of thelast century. Against the backdrop of civil strife and war in the late 1960s,Hirschman wrote that when faced with declining institutions, consumers have twochoices: Exit and go elsewhere with their support or dollars, or use the power of voice to generate change from within. These two choices are mediated, heexplains, by members' loyalty to the institution. Loyalty makes people more likely to stay and work for change from inside. But loyalty is also a product of how effective a consumer's voice is likely to be; it does not stem from feeling locked-in or having no possibility of exit.
Hirschman died last year, but I'd like to think that he was aware of the rise of online communities supported by user-generated content andinteraction. That is the core of Tumblr. Perhaps more so than other socialmedia communities, Tumblr relies on giving its members a rich medium to voicetheir views. In return, it enjoys their fierce loyalty. Yahoo now seems to betrying to buy that loyalty. Some see the proposed deal as an effort to"buy cool." That's true too, but the cool will quickly turn tepid without the sustained loyalty of the Tumblr community.
Still, after the initial shock subsides, can Yahoo count onTumblr users staying on? That is probably how the investment bankers framed it— as a question of switching costs, lock-in, network externalities, and the like. Where are these users to go? There is no equivalent forum of this type,richness, and network size (at least not yet). It would seem that the 18-24year-old demographic that Yahoo is pining for does not have an easy exitchoice.
If the new owners indeed think that this community has now here to go, they will kill Tumblr, and possibly Yahoo too. As Hirschman explained, in an organization where entry is easy, exit may also be easy.Tumblr grew in part because it was so easy to join, to express oneself, and to be heard. It will be just as easy for its voluntary members to leave, maybe for another forum, but more likely for mobile social media that by pass the webentirely. Try acquiring that, Yahoo.
That deadly bullet might be dodged if more new (Yahoo) customers join Tumblr than leave, or if the loss itself can be stemmed. Theresult would be a growth in the customer base of Tumblr, which may be good forYahoo, if it can find a way to make money from the community. This seems to be the outcome that Yahoo is aiming for when it assures Tumblr users that it would leave the unit under independent management and promises "not to screw itup."
But leaving an acquired Tumblr alone is not enough to make Yahoo cool. It just means that Yahoo would be an investor in a cool property.Yahoo might make money on that, just as it has on its profitable joint venturein China, where it has been almost an arm's length investor (in part by choice,and in part because the Chinese kept it there). Such an acquisition within dependent management would not be the silver bullet that is available to Mayer.
With Tumblr, Mayer should instead see an opportunity that exists to build even greater loyalty by enhancing consumer voice within the platform, instead of just limiting exit. Hirschman urged the embattled governments and companies of the 1960s to listen more closely to their citizensand customers, and then to act to regain lost trust. For Yahoo this would mean to listen more closely to that young demographic, not to seek to own it.
Instead, Yahoo needs Tumblr as a "reverse mentor."If that is the goal, one would expect Yahoo not just to say it will not messwith Tumblr, but — more importantly — that it welcomes Tumblr's guidance to change the rest of its operation. Don't just leave Tumblr founder David Karpalone — invite him to transform Yahoo itself.
This silver-bullet strategy may not involve an acquisitionof $1.1 billion, or at least not yet. Other companies have learned to listen better by using partnerships that are short of full acquisition. Disney learned from Pixar in that way. In an earlier era of computing, IBM learned the software and service business by cooperating with multiple partners. Roche learned about biotech through its partnership with Genentech. Often these partnershipsdid end in acquisition; but that bigger step took place after the acquirer hadshown itself willing and ready to reform itself dramatically, from the inside.Without that readiness, these marriages would have failed.
Has Yahoo decided to reform itself and to listen more intently to a new generation of users? Investors hope it has. By itself, theact of buying Tumblr does not demonstrate that Yahoo now has the will tochange. But the success of this deal will surely depend on that.
[908 words]Source: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/05/yahoo_tumblr_and_the_loyalty_f.html
PS, 越障居然又出现了粘连的问题，已经改了，对那些顶着粘成一坨做作业的童鞋表示敬佩！嚒嚒！
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发表于 2013-8-28 23:55:06
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