雅虎的新收购并不能让它重新变“酷”

    雅虎（Yahoo）11亿美元收购轻博客网站Tumblr，看来像是首席执行官玛丽莎•梅耶尔一次昂贵却失误的尝试——为了让停留在Web 1.0时代的雅虎重新变酷。雅虎目前处境艰难，不过前谷歌（Google）高管梅耶尔并不打算靠大力创新走出困境，而是拿起雅虎的提款卡，在不到一年的时间里将10家公司收入囊中。Tumblr是迄今为止数额最大的交易，但时间长了可能就会证明毫无用处。因为Tumblr的内容存在问题——大部分轻博客对广告商来说并不安全。

    女中豪杰梅耶尔去年接手雅虎时，投资界曾经一片欢呼雀跃。过去十年，雅虎完成了从懵懂青葱少年到成年人的转变，但该公司的业务一直没有起色。投资者对梅耶尔寄予厚望，希望她能让雅虎起死回生。梅耶尔头顶耀眼的谷歌光环，她或许能重塑雅虎破烂不堪的搜索引擎，并能梳理好过去几年该公司收购来一箩筐公司。

    梅耶尔的巨星效应不可否认。自去年7月上任以来，雅虎股价已累计上涨约70%。不过，现实情况却是雅虎的核心盈利起色不大，在搜索领域继续丧城失地，根据调研机构comScore的数据，雅虎搜索的市场份额从去年第二季度的13%滑落至今年第一季度的11%左右。去年雅虎的每股盈利增长大部分来自股票回购、税收优惠和前任管理团队所采取的成本削减政策。

    雅虎目前的市值大部分来自两处亚洲核心资产：日本雅虎和中国电子商务巨头阿里巴巴（去年第三季度，雅虎抛售了大部分所持阿里巴巴股票以进行自身的股票回购）。雅虎从阿里巴巴这头奶牛身上狠狠捞了一笔，暂时喂饱了饥饿的股东。该公司目前亟需要做的是扩大营收。梅耶尔认为雅虎当下应该扩充移动互联网实力。研究表明使用手机和平板电脑访问互联网的用户越来越多，传统PC和笔记本用户正呈下降趋势。调研公司eMarketer表示，美国市场移动互联网广告开支今年有望达到40亿美元，比去年上涨72%。

    在过去一年，梅耶尔一共收购了10家移动应用程序开发商，每家都花费了数百万美元。虽然移动是大势所趋，但雅虎的收购显然吃了不少苦，换句话说，花了冤枉钱。例如，雅虎用3000万美元现金收购的Summly在硅谷彻底沦为笑柄，这款iPhone应用是由一个十来岁的孩子开发的，而且没有营收。

    在Tumblr的11亿美元衬托下，雅虎其它收购看来都不值一提了。如果你不是青少年，不是时尚人士，不是极客，也不是人体艺术欣赏者，那Tumblr就仅仅是一个“轻博客”，任何人都可以在上面畅所欲言。不过Tumblr的意义不仅仅是个和谷歌博客类似的博客站点，它拥有自己的社群，核心用户们会耗费大量时间阅读和张贴内容（例如视频），并将其他人的内容转记到私人Tumblr里。Tumblr使用起来很简单，界面也很清晰明了，年轻的用户群，穿着套头衫的创始人，表现不错的移动市场，十分给力的“分享”力度——堪称一个完美的Web 2.0产品。但Tumblr的营收乏善可陈，今年的营收目标更是不切实际的1亿美元（去年仅为1200万美元），而且管理团队对广告极为抵制。

    Yahoo's $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr looks like an expensive and misguided attempt by chief executive Marissa Mayer to somehow make the Web 1.0 company "cool" again. Instead of innovating her way out of the mediocre corner of the Internet in which Yahoo currently resides, the former Google executive has instead decided to take the company's debit card and go on a shopping spree, snapping up 10 companies in less than a year on the job. Tumblr is by far the most expensive bauble she has picked up so far and could prove a dud over the long term given its questionable content, much of which is "NSFA" -- Not Safe For Advertisers.

    When Mayer took the helm at Yahoo (YHOO) last year, investors were ecstatic. The company had been on a listless voyage over the previous decade as it struggled to move from awkward adolescence into adulthood. Ms. Mayer's appointment gave investors hope that Yahoo could somehow be pulled back from the brink of technological irrelevance. She was seen as a bright star equipped with the magic Google (GOOG) touch that would, hopefully, help restore Yahoo's rusty search engine as well as the hodgepodge of companies it acquired over the years.

    Mayer's star power is undeniable. Yahoo's stock is now up around 70% since her appointment to the top job in July of last year. This is despite the fact that Yahoo's core earnings have remained relatively flat and that it has continued to lose ground in search, moving from a 13% market share last summer to around an 11% share in the first quarter of this year, according to data from comScore (SCOR). Much of the company's earnings per share growth in the past year has come from stock buybacks, paying less in taxes and cost-cutting measures instituted by its former management team.

    Most of Yahoo's value derives from its two core Asian assets, Yahoo Japan and the Chinese internet bazaar, Alibaba (much of which the company sold off last fall to pay for a big stock buyback). After slaughtering the Alibaba cow to give a lavish feast to its starved shareholders, Yahoo needs desperately to replenish its earnings. Mayer rightly believes that Yahoo should be doing more to expand its presence on the mobile web. Studies show people are increasingly turning to their phones and tablets to access the web instead of the traditional desktop or laptop. Mobile web advertising spending in the U.S. is expected to explode to around $4 billion this year, up 72% from last year, according to eMarketer.

    So far, Mayer has snapped up 10 mobile-centric app companies in the past year, paying a few million dollars for each of them. While mobile is the way of the future, the company's approach has faults -- namely, backlash. For example, dolling out $30 million in cash for Summly -- an iPhone app made by a teenager that has no revenue -- was greeted by Silicon Valley with derision.

    Now comes Tumblr. At $1.1 billion, it makes Yahoo's other purchases look like rounding errors. For those who aren't teenagers, fashionistas, tech geeks, or porn aficionados Tumblr is a "microblogging" site where anyone can post pretty much anything they want. But Tumblr is more than just a big web hosting blog site, like Google's Blogger -- it has a true community of core users who spend hours upon hours reading, posting gifs (moving pictures), and "reblogging" each other's posts to their own personal Tumblrs. It's easy to set up, has a clean interface, a young user base, a hoodie-sporting founder, a decent mobile presence, and lots of "sharing" -- the perfect Web 2.0 brew. It also has scant revenue, unrealistic revenue goals of $100 million this year (it made around $12 million last year), and a management team that thinks advertising sucks.