Kakul says Flickr had 37k users when she joined, just prior to the Yahoo acquisition:

http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/21/the-former-flickr-employees-guide-to-tumblrs-yahoo-survival/

AllThingsD says that Tumblr has 30-50 million dashboard users, not 300 million as previously reported:

http://allthingsd.com/20130521/how-many-users-does-tumblr-really-have/

Tumblr's revenue last year was only $5 million:

http://valleywag.gawker.com/source-tumblr-made-even-less-money-than-reported-last-508851058

Rumor mill says Tumblr's revenue this year would have only been $15 million:

http://www.businessinsider.com/tumblrs-active-users-lighter-than-expected-2013-5

There was a LOT of spinning going on.

They forgot/didn't factor in that many people keep multiple tlogs...

Right! So there are actually many fewer Tumblr users than 100+ million blogs make it seem.

"Tumblr's employees will also do well. The company's first 10 employees will receive an average of $6.2 million in cash; the first 30 will receive an average of $3.3 million in cash, and the rest of the 178 employees will each receive $371,000."

Union Square invested $400,000 in Tumblr's seed round and made $253 million:

http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20130521/TECHNOLOGY/130529969

Fred Wilson says a lot of details of the deal were wrong:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5747780

According to PrivCo [http://goo.gl/AW7GD], here are all the payouts of the 1,100 mn:

$286 mn: USV

$231 mn: Spark Capital

$253 mn: David Karp

$176 mn: Sequoia

$88 mn: Greylock, Insight Ventures, DFJ

$66 mn: Employees (6% of the 1,100 mn)

The math adds up to 71% of Tumblr being owned by VCs. Also Bloomberg reported that David Karp asked for as much stock as Yahoo would give him, because he sees himself working on Tumblr for the next few decades. It also reflects the sentiment that Marco Arment's blogpost yesterday expressed.

“This is something I’ve been building for the last seven years and hope employs me 30 years from now."

According to Fortune's Dan Primack, USV received "$192 million in proceeds." Spark Capital invested the same amount as Union Square Ventures, so according to Primack, the Boston-based firm also took home $192 million. Their stake was 35% combined and they invested $13 million each. 

Yahoo did not buy Tumblr for existing revenue:

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-yahoos-11-billion-tumblr-buy-is-a-great-idea-2013-5

Yahoo will put more ads in the dashboard:

http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-explains-how-yahoo-will-make-money-with-tumblr-2013-5

New Tumblr ad pitch deck:

http://www.businessinsider.com/tumblrs-ad-sales-pitch-deck-2013-5

Yahoo doesn't care about Tumblr porn being unsafe for brands because of Ad Targeting + Follow opt-in.

http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-tumblr-porn-why-it-doesnt-matter-2013-5

Behind the scenes of the acquisition:

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-tumblr-got-acquired-by-yahoo-for-11-billion-2013-5

Tumblr is no Geocities:

http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-buying-tumblr-like-geocities-2013-5

My suspicion has been that the acquisition was for

1) Thriving, loyal, community and Brand Reputation as leading to monetization opportunity

2) The behavioral and semantic data* as leading to content connections** (Yahoo! did not have a broad/thorough ecosystem of hashtags, for example, which otherwise explicitly link posts together.) 

* I understand 'semantic data' to be the meta and the tags used to categorize and link posts together. Is this correct, or is it only one piece of what 'semantic data' is?  What are the other pieces?  I've read that it's still a relatively ambiguous term.

** Is there a name for the web of connections that is created by tags?  not.. "web" or "system"... maybe "ontology/taxonomy"? 

Also, I think it's important to remember that the growth of Flickr coincides with the proliferation of compact digital cameras and maturation of DSLRs, and therefore emergence of a democratic netizen image economy (ie. outside of the established advertising editorial and stock professional world), pre-Smartphone.

What has flickr's population grown to under Yahoo (despite any spin that it "failed"*) since that 37K?

* a sentiment, spoken in the past tense, which I object to

Flickr had 60 million users when Kakul left in 2009:

http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/21/the-former-flickr-employees-guide-to-tumblrs-yahoo-survival/

I'm guessing it's at least twice that now, which makes it roughly the same size as Instagram.

I think Yahoo sees in Tumblr a property that COULD grow to be meaningful to Yahoo's 700 million users.

Great advice from Hunter Walk on lessons learned from YouTube growing inside Google:

http://www.hunterwalk.com/2013/05/don-mess-up-tumblr-five-lessons-learned.html

3. Stop Short Term Monetization That Won't Scale

YouTube was just starting to earn revenue via a host of banner ads and one-off branded campaigns. Neither of these were going to be important longterm and many of the programs put money in our pocket, but passed through little benefit to content creators because they sold YouTube inventory. It took a good 18 months but under the right goals and leadership the cross functional team started sunsetting this stuff for more scalable monetization products which put money in content creators' pockets. 

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/what-marissa-mayer-can-learn-from-google-yahoo-2013-5

Man, just seeing the flatness of the 2D Y! logo next to the graphically evolved T logo illustrates enough.  Not that much more evolved, but perhaps is sufficient enough to represent the generational difference/cultural design practice.Though to be fair, Google Chrome's logo redesign from a 3D pokemon ball to the flatter geometric logo was quite cunning.

Yahoo will likely get a logo refresh soon. It's time.

I hope for the tumblr community that it will not be like Google effect on YT.

Wait, I thought Google was good to YouTube. Wasn't it?

I came on here to say the same thing!  Isn't YouTube way better now than it ever was?  I mean: timestamped links, HD, variable player size, playlist sort in ALPHABETICAL ORDER, recommendation engine, shared revenue, linked video preview in Gmail, makes fried chicken, and even a 400% bump in racist comments!  

The reason I was there: discovering random video by clicking the right column disappeared. Now this column is based on your historic, which is highly stupid. It's full a adds. Everything is made so poster will add adds. Oh, and it's Google: over-powered kids than can't understand that their very personal vision of the web is not necessarily the only truth.

In that case I know what you mean. Discovery given way to Targeted.

G/YT: "We know what you want!"

Us: "But what I want is something I've never seen before..."

G/YT: "... Here's something you've seen before!"

Us: "..."

G/YT: "and here's another!"

Us: "...Oh, well that was alright, I guess... thanks."

G/YT: "You're welcome! Now please click on our ads. Or else"

I agree, they did go overboard with the ads. But most consumers don't seem to mind.

Because most consumers are lazy brainwashed sheep. Thanks god, there's always an alternative on the internet.

Are there any alternatives to YouTube you like?

For hosting Vimeo is great. Dailymotion has good programs. And Rutube can be useful too.

I like them all. And for discovery, Reddit Videos.

Technically though, the right column for discovery works for ME, because generally, I want to know about more videos based on my history - because I ONLY WATCH THINGS I WANT TO SEE.  Example, I use YT to stay up on Bboying and Street Dance from around the world.  YT provides new provocative suggestions in this realm quite competently, and I find new producers/dancers.