雅虎不应收购Tumblr的五大理由

    如果用数学计算，你可以把预设回报率的门槛算得很低，让这笔收购看起来显得非常划算，但我认为，这笔交易存在很多独特的战略性挑战，使这笔交易变得风险很高。如果我是雅虎的话，我是不会掏11亿美元买下Tumblr的。

    以下是五大理由：

    （1）Tumblr的首席执行官大卫•卡普一向坚持不在Tumblr上使用传统展示广告，他的坚持是正确的。不过到了周二早上，卡普就会有一个新老板， 但是现在看来卡普还会留在Tumblr继续负责公司事务。作为Tumblr背后的总设计师，卡普一直公开抵制在Tumblr平台上使用传统的展示广告。我也支持这一点。我之所喜欢在Tumblr写博客和阅读博客文章，一个重要原因就是我喜欢它带给我的感觉。我可以在它上面发一张龙虾卷或是我干儿子的照片，追忆一下职业生涯的似水流年，感觉都很棒。但是传统的展示广告会破坏这种美感。Tumblr并不是为展示广告而生的，如果为了适应展示广告而做出改变，我不知道Tumblr是否还能保持它的特立独行。

    （2）如果传统展示广告没有用在Tumblr上，那么新型的“自然广告”必须以极其飞快的速度增长才行，而这很难做到。卡普认为，Tumblr在发展新型广告上具有很大的潜力，比如它的Tumblr Radar和Tumblr Spotlight这两个广告赞助计划。这些“天然”广告形式非常美观而且适合Tumblr，但是我们现在还不知道市场对它的需求有多大。去年这些广告给Tumblr带来了1300万美元的销售收入。但是要想每年靠这些天然广告（不管是现有的还是有待开发的）赚1.08亿美元就是另一回事了，而且它比仅仅靠用展示广告赚钱还要难得多。

    （3）拥有大量网页点击量的其实不是Tumblr，而是一个个博主。Tumblr首先是一个博客平台和一个内容管理系统，其次才是一个目标站点。雅虎想在tumblr.com上打广告很容易，但是要想把广告打到我自己的博客johnsaroff.com上却很难。要想在johnsaroff.com上打广告，雅虎首先得争求我的同意，然后才能在我的网页上放广告，还得给我分成，然后还得让广告客户相信，我的johnsaroff.com是值得他们打广告的。YouTube前几年在处理用户上传的视频时也遇到了同样的挑战。但是谷歌和YouTube花了好几年的时间，才断断续续地有了自己的产品愿景、工艺人才、业务开发工作和客户管理技巧。这些技巧可能是雅虎和Tumblr目前都不具备的，而且需要很多时间去开发。

    You can use the math to get the hurdle rate low enough to make the acquisition seem like a no-brainer, but I believe that there are many strategic challenges unique to Tumblr that make this acquisition a risky one. If I were Yahoo, I would not buy Tumblr for $1.1 billion.

    Here are five big reasons why:

    1. Tumblr CEO David Karp is correct in his resistance to the use of traditional display on Tumblr. Karp will have a new boss on Tuesday morning, but it appears as though he will remain in charge at Tumblr. As the product visionary behind Tumblr, Karp has been very public about his resistance to display ads on the platform. I agree with him. One of the reasons that I love Tumblr both as a blogger and a reader is about how it feels. I can post a lobster roll, my godson and wistful thoughts on my career and they all "work" on my tumblr. Traditional display disrupts that aesthetic. Tumblr isn't built for display and I'm not sure if the product can be changed to accommodate display and still maintain its Tumblr-ness.

    2. If traditional display is not used on Tumblr, then new forms of native advertising have to grow at incredibly rapid rates. That's hard. Karp sees Tumblr as having great potential for new forms of advertising such as Tumblr sponsorship programs like Tumblr Radar and Tumblr Spotlight. These "native" advertising formats are beautiful and fit with Tumblr, but it is unclear how much demand is out there for them. Selling these kinds of units earned Tumblr $13 million of revenue last year. Generating $108 million peryear of net revenue with special native advertising units (both existing and to be developed) is a different and more difficult challenge than just making Tumblr a shelfspace for display.

    3. Tumblr doesn't own many of its page views, the bloggers do. Tumblr is a blogging platform/content management system first, and a destination site second. For Yahoo to place ads on tumblr.com is easy, for it to place them on johnsaroff.com is hard. To facilitate advertising on johnsaroff.com Yahoo will need to get my permission, put an ad unit on my page, cut me in on a rev share and then convince an advertiser that johnsaroff.com is worth something. It's a challenge similar to what YouTube has done with user-uploaded videos over the past several years to great effect. But, it requires product vision, engineering talent, business development work and account management skills that took Google (GOOG) and YouTube years to grow with many fits and starts. These skills may not be in either the Yahoo or Tumblr organizations right now and will likely take time to develop.