Last week’s reports of a possible buy-out of blogging site Tumblr by Yahoo were on the nose as the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Yahoo’s board has given the go-ahead for acquiring the service to the tune of $1.1 billion.

An official announcement was expected to happen some time later today, according to some reports, but the Journal reports that Yahoo and Tumblr have already made the announcement and that Tumblr will continue to operate as a separate company “per the agreement and our promise not to screw it up.” Tumblr founder and CEO David Carp will remain in his position.

The current deal is very similar to last year’s purchase of Instagram by Facebook in that a company with a large user base but very little in the way of revenue was picked up for a sum that may or may not be justified. Yahoo will be counting on the popularity that Tumblr has with younger audiences but will have to make sure that they don’t alienate that audience when attempting to monetise their new acquisition.

Source: Digital Trends