Wiggles of Hope: Yahoo Stock on the Rise, At Highest Point Since May 2008
Yahoo’s stock price is now at it’s highest since May 2008 thanks to a steady stream of acquisitions including the purchase of the Tumblr blogging service for $1.1B today, policy changes and other positive PR for the company. While this is still a far cry from the 10 year high in late 2005, or peak price of over $100/share in 2000 prior to the dot-com crash, Mayer has done more to move the needle in her 10 month tenure than the 4 predecessors who came after Jerry Yang’s departure in 2009.
Scroll down to see Yahoo vs. Google stock price growth comparison for the past year.
Google vs. Yahoo Stock Price Growth – 1 Year Comparison
HT: Hacker News, Images via Google Finance
Project Decor Raises $5M for Social Home Decorating
In a regulatory filing Project Decor revealed they have raised $5M in venture capital, which includes investment from Launch Capital. The company was founded in September 2011, and previously raised $1.6M in March 2012.
Project Decor is cofounded by Andy Appelbaum, Cliff Sirlin, and Aaron Wallace. CEO Appelbaum is a well-known New York angel investor and cofounder of online food delivery service Seamless Web, and previously founded several companies alongside Sirlin. Project Decor aims to help people decorate their homes, and is part of a hot space lead by Houzz and Tastemaker. AngelList currently lists 88 home decor startups on their site.
For their part Project Decor seems to be amassing a following, with more than 1,300 likes on their Facebook page and over 2,000 followers on Twitter. For a social shopping service building visibility and a community will be crucial, and we’ve added them to the Startup Index as one to watch.
In Race to Be First on Tumblr Acquisition by Yahoo, Wall Street Journal Publishes Questionable Headline
Update, Sunday May 19, 2013 @ 6:21pm: Some readers mentioned that they thought they’d read somewhere that Tumblr’s board had already approved the sale, but with hundreds of Tumblr news stories over the past few days we were struggling to track down a link where that was actually published. Now we have that post. Jeff Bercovici wrote at Forbes yesterday that he independently confirmed “Tumblr’s board, which includes representatives from Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital and Sequoia Capital, has already voted to approve Yahoo’s offer.”
The Wall Street Journal headline this morning reads href=”http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324787004578493130789235150.html”>”Yahoo to Buy Tumblr for $1.1 Billion”, but last I checked the purchase of a company requires the consent of both sides. The same story reads:
“It wasn’t immediately clear whether Tumblr’s board had also approved the deal.”
I realize that it is highly likely at this point that Tumblr intended to do this deal (and readers point out they probably already have a letter of intent to be sold), but how can publishing this headline be considered legit without confirmation from a source? Couldn’t this even have a material impact on $YHOO stock price in the morning? Reporting the deal as fact when it is unconfirmed seems wrong… but now even the New Yorks Times is running with the story, so it must be true right?
@daniellemorrill @nickbilton no one is talking (but they are)
— Kara Swisher (@karaswisher) May 19, 2013
I’ll take this to mean they have sources speaking on background but can’t confirm anything. AllThingsD is widely known to always have the inside scoop on what’s going on at Yahoo
Why This Matters
The biggest issue here is that WSJ is a massively reputable news source, and this headline has lead to lazy journalism on the part of many other outlets who appear to have mostly copy/pasted the existing story and conveniently missed the part where Tumblr hasn’t confirmed. The public who aren’t watching closely will simply take these headlines at face value, after all they’re busy and this is all entertainment anyway so who cares if we bend the truth right?
- Geekwire: “Yahoo buying Tumblr for $1.1B”
- AllThingsdD: “Yahoo Tumblrs for Cool: Board Approves $1.1 Billion Deal as Expected”
- SFist: “Yahoo Will Buy ‘Hipster Blogging Platform’ Tumblr For $1.1 Billion”
(the “as expected” was added after the story was published). See Kara’s first tweet with the original headline and then the second tweet with the updated one.
Yahoo Tumblrs for Cool: Board Approves $1.1 Billion Deal dthin.gs/12Mgdc2
— Kara Swisher (@karaswisher) May 19, 2013
Yahoo Tumblrs for Cool: Board Approves $1.1 Billion Deal as Expected dthin.gs/12Mgdc2
— Kara Swisher (@karaswisher) May 19, 2013
Geekwire changed their headline to “buying”, but this tweet captures the original headline:
Report: Yahoo buys Tumblr for $1.1 billion goo.gl/fb/yCM0w
— GeekWire (@geekwire) May 19, 2013
