Tumblr Sold to Yahoo for $1.1 Billion; David Karp Could Be Worth $2.2 Million After Deal
David Karp founded the social media site Tumblr in his mother's apartment in 2007 and on Sunday he sold the entire company to Yahoo for $1.1 billion.
Karp, the 26-year-old New Yorker created the micro-blogging platform that is used mainly for posting pictures, text and video. The social media network attracts 300 million monthly unique visitors and 120,00 sign-ups every day, with about 900 posts a second, The Daily Mail reported.
Although the site attracted a lot of traffic, there wasn't much content space for advertisers.
Yahoo's board of directors agreed on Sunday to purchse the highly popular blogging platform from Karp to help tap into its' younger audience.
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer publicly announced the purchase of Tumblr with a post on her own Tumblr page.
Her first few words were: "We promise not to screw it up.'
Tumblr fans weren't too thrilled about the deal because they feared the site could end up being too populated by advertisements.
Mayer posted her own Tumblr post to assure fans of the site they need not panic.
"The combination of Tumblr+Yahoo! could grow Yahoo!'s audience by 50% to more than a billion monthly visitors, and could grow traffic by approximately 20%," she said. "In terms of working together, Tumblr can deploy Yahoo!'s personalization technology and search infrastructure to help its users discover creators, bloggers, and content they'll love."
Mayer also said that Karp, a high school dropout would remain active as CEO for Tumblr.
Karp, also assured Tumblr bloggers that the deal was in the best interest for the company.
"Our team isn't changing. Our roadmap isn't changing," Karp said in a statement. "Tumblr gets better faster with more resources to draw from."
According to reports, Karp could be worth as much as $220 million after the deal.
"There are very few people who have the privilege of getting to invent things that billions of people use," he said in an interview with The Guardian.
