Yahoo! has disclosed the number of government requests for data it has received over the past 18 months, becoming the latest tech company to do so after the fallout from the NSA spying scandal.

In a statement co-signed by CEO Marissa Mayer and Yahoo! general counsel Ron Bell, the company said that Yahoo! received 12,000 to 13,000 requests from FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) and U.S. law enforcement agencies during the period between December 1, 2012 and May 31, 2013.

Like other tech companies that have recently disclosed the number of U.S. law enforcement requests for data they have received, Yahoo! used its press release to reiterate that its commitment to user privacy, despite being implicated in PRISM.

“We’ve worked hard over the years to earn our users’ trust and we fight hard to preserve it,” Mayer and Bell said in the statement.

Facebook said on June 15 that for the six months ending December 31, 2012, it had received between 9,000 to 10,000 requests for data from U.S. law enforcement agencies. During that same period Microsoft received between 6,000 and 7,000 requests.

Google, on the other hand, has asked the U.S. government to be allowed to publish more information about national security requests it has been given. Google and Twitter (which have not yet revealed their data request numbers) have both criticized other tech companies for disclosing the number of data requests they received because their numbers do not break down the types of request made by type or government agency.

Yahoo!’s statement noted that “like all companies, Yahoo! cannot lawfully break out FISA request numbers at this time because those numbers are classified; however, we strongly urge the federal government to reconsider its stance on this issue.” The company said that most of the requests it received concerned fraud, kidnappings and other criminal investigations.

Yahoo! also stated that it will issue its first “global law enforcement transparency report” later this summer, which it will refresh with current statistics twice a year.

Yahoo! is offering to purchase social email startup Xobni for $30 million to $40 million, according to AllThingsD’s sources. If the deal goes through, Xobni would be the latest acquisition by Yahoo! as CEO Marissa Meyer seeks to boost the company’s talent roster and product offerings.

Xobni’s social email plugin automatically creates a profile for each contact with correspondence history and data pulled from social networks including LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Skype and Hoovers. The San Francisco-based startup began with a Microsoft Outlook plugin and now supports Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and Apple’s iCloud, in addition to its Smartr Contacts apps for Android and iOS.

The deal makes sense for Yahoo! because it would enable the Internet giant to add a competitive edge to its email products. Furthermore, the startup already has strong ties with Yahoo!: Yahoo! co-founder David Filo previously worked with Xobni CEO Jeff Bonforte, who in turn was once vice president of social search and real-time communications at Yahoo!.

In addition to the whopping $1.1 billion Yahoo! paid to acquire Tumblr, the company has also made a series of mobile acquisitions. These include the news gathering and delivery startup Summly, which it purchased for close to $30 million. The Summly deal followed Yahoo!’s acquisition of social recommendation company Jybe, which was staffed by former Yahoo! employees.

As Drew Olanoff noted at the time of Jybe’s acquisition, the deal proves that Yahoo! is focused on “acquiring teams that do heavy research in machine and natural learning, which goes to show you that Mayer is giving the company an intelligence facelift of sorts.” (Speaking of additions to the Yahoo! team, Drew himself recently left TechCrunch to go purple).

The acquisition’s closure, however, is still uncertain. Longtime Xobni followers might remember that in 2008 the startup turned down an acquisition offer from Microsoft in the $20 million range. While the $30 million to $40 million offered from Yahoo! represents an increase from Microsoft’s offer, it is important to note that it is still less than the $40 million that the startup has raised from investors including First Round Capital, Khosla Ventures and Y Combinator. AllThingsD reports that some Xobni common shareholders might not get any of their investment back over preferred shareholders, which might prevent the deal from going through, especially since Yahoo! seems unlikely to offer more money.

Thought Yahoo’s acquisition spree would culminate with a $1.1 billion deal for Tumblr? Nope, not so much. In fact, the buy-happy company just quietly made its second acquisition in 24 hours — in two different markets, no less. Yes, Yahoo followed this morning’s purchase of iOS photo app maker, GhostBird Software, by making a play into the enterprise conference calling space. Wait, what?

Yep, users of six-year-old free conference calling service, Rondee, were tonight informed via email that the startup has been acquired by Yahoo for an undisclosed sum. It will also suffer the same fate met by other recent Yahoo acquisitions — like MileWise, Astrid, GoPollGo and Loki Studios to name just four — in that it will soon be going the way of the dinosaur. After June 30th, the company’s website now reads, users will no longer be allowed to access their data or create new conference calls.

The startup will continue its progressive shut down from there, officially closing operations on July 12th, before ultimately cutting off user access to their calling data on July 30th, the startup said in an email to its customers today (copied below). However, to avoid stranding its users completely on such short notice, the company said that it’s arranging for “user Login ID and on-demand pins to work with InstantConference,” a company (and, previously, a competitor) it describes as a “highly reputable conference calling service.” Not sure that’s much consolation. “Hey, we may be forcing you to leave … but at least the place we’re sending you has electricity, right?”

What’s A Rondee

Rondee, for those who haven’t been following the crowded and congested conference calling market, launched in 2007 on a mission to build the “Evite for conference calls.” The startup set out to lower the barriers to entry in the conference calling arena and make it accessible to the masses. Today, that means it offers basic conference calling capabilities around the clock (for free) to anyone with an email address.

Granted, for those looking to get “fancy” with call recording, like having access to audio, custom tones, call directories and call scheduling, some account setup is required. But that’s about it. Users can choose between free, on-demand conference calling, or free, “Scheduled Rondees,” in which users can pick a future date and time to schedule a conference call and let Rondee send out email invitations to which invitees can respond to and use via the company’s website. Straightforward, easy to use and free.

Of course, while those are traits every company should shoot for, the VoIP market looks a little bit different than it did six years ago, becoming nearly ubiquitous thanks to companies like Skype and Google, meanwhile, startups like UberConference have moved onto free visual conference calling to compete with Hangouts et al. Today, Rondee’s basic VoIP model sounds very familiar.

So Why Did Yahoo Just Buy This?

While Yahoo nor Rondee has shared any real details on the terms of the deal or the motivation, we do know from a quick Google search (and a look at its press page) that the startup has been pretty quiet of late. Sure, it’s likely this wasn’t an exorbitantly expensive buy for Yahoo, but this also hasn’t been an area of strength (or focus) for Yahoo for a long time, which starts to make it seem like there isn’t really a good explanation for this one.

Maybe Yahoo wants to integrate Rondee into its internal conference solution, for internal IT use, seeing as it’s cheaper than buying an enterprise solution? Probably not.

Er, Maybe Because…

What may be more likely (and hopefully is the case) is that Yahoo liked the team and was eager to make use of its talent, so Marissa Mayer pushed Yahoo’s Acme Acqui-hire Button so that Rondee can join it in re-building Yahoo Messenger. Maybe? After all, on its website, Rondee says that it will be joining Yahoo’s Small Business Team, so while it may be a stretch, motivation could lie in the company’s has-been messaging client.

Marissa Mayer has made talent acquisition one of her top priorities since becoming CEO, and mostly her shopping spree has targeted mobile — in other words, showing the company understands that its mobile strategy and products have to evolve if Yahoo ever hopes to be truly relevant again. (And, really, it’s probably a little late, but…)

Right now, it’s easy to take a look at Yahoo’s product portfolio and sigh. Case in point: People used to Yahoo Messenger as their go-to chat app. (Well, some people did, somewhere. We’re still trying to find out who they are exactly.) But the point is that Yahoo’s messaging client used to be enormous, and now it’s about as cool as the Macarena. Meanwhile, sadly for Yahoo, gamified and chat-ified messaging apps are all the rage and continue to proliferate, especially in emerging markets. In some Upside Down World, this could mean that there’s still opportunity here for Yahoo.

Don’t Shoot The Messenger?

Though with Google’s assets like gChat, Google Voice, Gmail and Hangouts, just to name a few, Yahoo has a long way to go. A pretty long way. Sure, if anyone knows how to get Yahoo up to speed using Google’s playbook, it’s Marissa Mayer. But then there’s WhatsApp, iMessage, Viber and too many more to name. Google launched free voice calling from Gmail nearly three years ago, and adding similar capabilities and enhancements to Yahoo Mail would make sense — and wouldn’t hurt. Of course, even if it were somehow able to pull it off, weakly copying Googles Roadmap doesn’t do Yahoo any favors. It’s dangerous and, well, just sad.

Or maybe not. Maybe Yahoo will use Rondee as part of a foundation on which it will build a Hangouts competitor. Why the world needs that, of course, is another question entirely — sorry to say, Yahoo Mail diehards.

These are a few possible explanations for Yahoo acquiring Rondee, though I’m not sure they’re particularly satisfying. To this point, it’s worth reading this post (really, lament) on Yahoo Messenger from Yahoo’s former director of global tech initiatives. Marissa Mayer seems to be making an effort to address some of the internal idiocy Smith cites as contributing not only to the downfall of Messenger itself but to the downfall of products subsequently created (internally!) that might have saved it or at least prolonged its life.

Mostly, Smith attributes Yahoo’s struggles to crappy leadership, a management focused on preservation rather than trimming-to-grow or innovation, the ole “it’s hard to get stuff done at a big company” line and a lack of a unifying product vision. The latter of which, at least, fittingly smacks of the very product strategy currently at work in Google Land.

This seems to be a familiar tune at Yahoo, though it is heartening that some of that stuff is fixable. However, watching Marissa Mayer acquire all these startups that are on their last lifeline or just keeping their head above water is suspect. Now, it could be questionable in a good way, provoking media attention, buzz and providing a (relatively) cheap way to bring in quality talent. And maybe we’re watching a grand vision unfold, with Marissa acting as the Great Unifier it sounds like Yahoo desperately needs.

Sure, this could be akin to watching Tony Stark miraculously build an Iron Man suit from spare parts and scrap metal … or this turnaround strategy very well prove to be suspect in the same way that a bunch of bricks painted yellow does not gold bullion make.

For more, find Rondee’s email to users below:

Dear Rondee User:

We thank you for being with us over the last six years as we grew Rondee’s free conference calling service. It has been a privilege to work with you.

Yahoo! has just acquired Rondee, and we will be joining Yahoo! Small Business to continue innovating with technologies that help small businesses and groups.

Starting July 12, 2013, RONDEE WILL NO LONGER BE OPERATIVE. To minimize inconvenience to you, we have arranged for your Login ID and Rondee On Demand PINs to work with InstantConference, a highly reputable conference calling service. InstantConference has created a special free plan for Rondee users with unlimited minutes, unlimited conferences and up to 150 callers per conference.

You’ll do On Demand calls with InstantConference the same way you did with Rondee:

REDACTED
If you want to use advanced features such as audio recording, call scheduling using the Outlook add-on or real-time monitoring, you’ll need to log in to the account created for you at InstantConference.

REDACTED
There are three main differences between advanced features on Rondee vs. InstantConference:

Call recording works differently on InstantConference. Instead of activating audio recording in advance online, the organizer does it on the call by pressing *9 and entering the 4 digit code shown above, or by turning on audio recording through a moderator control panel. Learn More

InstantConference has a fully featured moderator control panel. You can monitor call attendance, mute, disconnect, or lock the conference in real-time. Learn More

InstantConference has a different way of handling scheduled conferences. Rather than the web-based format used by Rondee, InstantConference offers an Outlook Add-On which is convenient and easy to use. Learn More
BY USING YOUR RONDEE LOGIN AND PIN(S) WITH INSTANTCONFERENCE, YOU CONSENT TO THE INSTANTCONFERENCE TERMS OF SERVICE AND PRIVACY POLICY.

CLICK HERE for Terms and Conditions.

CLICK HERE for Privacy Policy.

For Premium users with balances in their PayPal account, we will be refunding those balances right after July 12, 2013. InstantConference also offers toll-free conferencing with plans as low as 2.9 cents a minute.

PLEASE NOTE: The Rondee service will soon no longer be operative and will no longer accept new sign-ups. Current users will be able to continue using Rondee for conference calls through July 12, 2013 and log in to access account information through August 12, 2013.

For questions about the Rondee service or your Rondee account, click here.

For questions about InstantConference, click here.

Thank you again for your support,

The Rondee Team

Yahoo has just quietly announced that they’ve acquired GhostBird Software, the creators of advanced iOS photography apps, KitCam and PhotoForge2.

Though details of the deal are still under wraps, Yahoo is explicitly saying that they acquired GhostBird for the sake of improving Flickr. Could this suggest that a more advanced Flickr app is on the way?

Prior to today’s acquisition, GhostBird had released three iOS photo apps: KitCam, PhotoForge, and PhotoForge 2. KitCam allowed for mobile photographers to shoot with a bunch of different “lenses” and “films” (read: filters), and to manually adjust settings like white balance and exposure. The PhotoForge series, meanwhile, focused on modifying photos after the fact, with image resizing, cropping, metadata editing, and the adjustment of advanced settings like curves and levels.

In an announcement on their website, GhostBird has disclosed that no further development will be done on either app, and they don’t intend to support new versions of iOS. Furthermore, according to GhostBird, once either app is gone from your phone, it’s gone for good:

Users who have previously purchased the app but don’t have them on their devices today will not be able to re-download past purchases. As of today, KitCam and PhotoForge2 are no longer available for download from the App Store.

This is a bit strange, as most apps that have been removed (or even banned) from the App Store can continue to be re-downloaded through iCloud by anyone who purchased it prior to its removal.

Update: Sure enough, GhostBird misspoke; a Yahoo! rep just confirmed to us that while the apps are being removed from the store, those who already purchased GhostBird’s apps will be able to re-download them through iCloud moving forward.

Curiously, the studio had gone a bit quiet in the past few months, going almost totally silent as of mid-March. After tweeting at least a few times a week for months before, the team’s last tweet before today’s announcement was on March 17. Meanwhile, both PhotoForge2 and KitCam stopped seeing updates at the end of March.

(Fun Fact: Before turning their focus to photography apps, GhostBird dabbled in games. Their one published game, a zombie infection simulator called The Raging Dead, became something of a zombie itself when its final update shipped in February 2010.)

PRISM is real. Even the U.S. government now acknowledges its existence. The question that remains unanswered, though, is how involved Google, Apple, Yahoo, AOL, Paltalk and Facebook were. These companies are all named as “providers” on the original slides, including the dates the NSA started collecting data from them. The reporter with the most direct access to these documents, Glenn Greenwald, has also now repeatedly stated that the NSA had “direct access” to these company’s servers or seized this data from them.

According to Greenwald, NSA agents even have real-time access to conversations and chats on Skype, Gmail and other platforms that are being targeted. We contacted every single one of the companies implicated on these slides, though, and all of them either denied having ever heard of the program and virtually all of them claim that they would never give any government “direct access” to their servers. The one line virtually all of them use is some variation of “we do not provide the government with direct access to our servers.” They all, however, say that they comply with court orders after scrutinizing the request.

So we’re at an impasse here. The government acknowledges that PRISM exists, but the companies that are supposedly involved all say they’ve never heard of it. Greenwald says they are either giving the government direct access or the government simply seized the data from them.

If these companies aren’t giving the government direct access, could they give it “indirect access?” That way, the statements remain technically valid. Assuming these companies knew about the program, they obviously wouldn’t be allowed to talk about it anyway.

One suggestion I’ve seen floating around is that all Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Co. would have to do is give the government access to their networks and let the NSA copy all of this data. Or they could send their users’ data to the NSA, too, but given that the leak seems to imply real-time access, that seems unlikely.

The way things stand right now, it seems the NSA has deals in place with these companies — deals they can’t talk about — that allow the government to tap into their traffic (maybe at a large exchange point) and route it through one of the NSA’s massive data centers for storage and analysis.

If everybody but the U.S. government is denying knowledge of this program, something is clearly wrong. There are still 37 pages of this 41 page presentation that haven’t leaked. Hopefully we get to see those in the near future, and maybe that’ll shed some light on these tech companies’ exact roles in this program.

Update: The Washington Post, which also reported on this story independently from the Guardian, has now added the following to its report:

It is possible that the conflict between the PRISM slides and the company spokesmen is the result of imprecision on the part of the NSA author. In another classified report obtained by The Post, the arrangement is described as allowing “collection managers [to send] content tasking instructions directly to equipment installed at company-controlled locations,” rather than directly to company servers.

This lends credence to the idea that the data collection was indeed done “indirectly” without direct access to the companies’ servers (but still with their knowledge).

Yahoo has tweaked its search-results page today (yes, it still does search, albeit now powered by Microsoft’s Bing), with a visual refresh that’s meant to better emphasize top search results and that clears up some visual clutter in the navigation bar and additional settings sidebar. Yahoo’s redesign may look familiar, because it’s quite similar to the one that Google introduced a couple of years ago.

As you can see by Yahoo’s own amazing animated GIF, results now appear higher up on the page, thanks to a single-line navigation bar that appears at the top-most edge of the browser window. Yahoo’s branding is also now smaller, and there’s a sign-in area right of the search bar itself. Along the left-hand side you have a simple navigation menu, allowing you to change the search category type and choose from different time options for results.

Yahoo also says there are some improvements on the backend that should result in faster load times, and notes that the new Navigation bar will spread to other Yahoo properties soon (which is also something Google did before). The page takes most of its cues from the new Yahoo homepage design, which it launched in February.

The company says this is just the beginning, and seems to indicate that further changes for Search results will be coming over the course of the next few years. The company has clearly been acquiring enough in terms of new product and talent to make some big changes to all aspects of its business, so maybe we’ll see some Summly summaries make their way to the results page, sort of like they’ve already done on mobile.

Starting the week of June 3rd, tomorrow, Yahoo is discontinuing Mail Classic. It’s requiring all Mail users to switch to the new version of Mail and accept a TOS/Privacy Policy update that lets it scan emails to “deliver product features, relevant advertising, and abuse protection”. You can opt out of the ads, but if you don’t want to be scanned, you have to ditch Yahoo Mail.

Yahoo launched the new version of Mail in December, and announced the discontinuation of Classic back in April. However, it didn’t mention anything about the new terms of service and privacy policy until it just began sending Classic users an email about having to switch. In an aptly named Help center entry “Do I have to upgrade to the new Yahoo! Mail?”, the company explains

“Beginning the week of June 3, 2013, older versions of Yahoo! Mail (including Yahoo! Mail Classic) will no longer be available. After that, you can access your Yahoo! Mail only if you upgrade to the new version. When you upgrade, you will be accepting our Communications Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. This includes the acceptance of automated content scanning and analyzing of your communications content.”

Those who upgrade can opt out of contextual ads through Yahoo’s Ad Manager. Yahoo bluntly tells users who refuse its new policies that they should either download their mail to another IMAP client, or close their account. Premium Mail Plus users who want to cancel their accounts can get a prorated refund.

Some are labeling the switch an aggressive invasion of privacy. An anonymous Jottit user writes: “Yahoo can now openly troll through email for personal information that it can share or hold onto indefinitely. Gay and haven’t come out yet? Yahoo knows…”

However, as commenters on Hacker News note, Gmail has long scanned your email to show you related ads. Even if you use a system like StartMail that doesn’t scan your messages, the system your conversation partners use might not be so hands-off. And as many warn, anything you send in an email could end up public, so keep the naughty stuff off the web.

A month after Tumblr introduced sponsored posts into its native mobile applications, the company is today bringing those same brand advertisements to its web dashboard. Launch partners for these new “Sponsored Web Posts,” as they’re called, include Viacom, Ford Motor Company, Universal Pictures, Capital One, AT&T, Denny’s and Purina.

Tumblr users will be able to reblog, like, follow and share these ads and the brands themselves directly from their web dashboard, which of course, is what we know all the Tumblr-lovin’ teens are just dying to do. Like Tumblr’s sidebar “Radar” ads, the new sponsored posts will be marked with an animated dollar sign icon to indicate that they are paid placements.

Also like Tumblr’s mobile advertising, users will only see up to four sponsored posts per day. The company notes in a brief announcement on the new ads that sponsored posts have already seen over 10 million likes and reblogs since their debut.

Sponsored Web Posts in the dashboard will continue to roll during a beta period that ends in June 2013. During the first week, premiere spots belong to Viacom, Ford Motor Company and Universal Pictures, and then they’ll become available to Capital One, AT&T, Denny’s and Purina.

“The engagement rates on the Tumblr Radar and Sponsored Mobile Posts have been spectacular and we have taken this same carefully architected approach to this new web in-dash opportunity,” said Lee Brown, Global Head of Sales at Tumblr, in a release. “The Tumblr post is a flexible, dynamic and expressive medium, and we are delighted to give marketers yet another opportunity to promote their content and connnect with this vibrant and engaged community.”

As Tumblr founder David Karp has previously explained time and again, Tumblr wants to offer advertisers canvas and space for “creative brand advertising” – something he feels hasn’t really had anywhere to live on the web. “We want to give them the space to do anything, a four-second loop, an hour and a half video, a high-res panorama, whatever they need to help them build amazing, interactive ads,” he said onstage during the TechCrunch Disrupt NY event in early May, ahead of the $1.1 billion Yahoo acquisition.

The expansion of brand advertising in Tumblr was expected, whether or not Yahoo bought the company. (Yahoo’s bigger plans involve search ads and ads that bloggers run themselves, for instance, and it doesn’t expect to see significant revenue from ads until next year.) But Tumblr’s younger user base is sensitive to change, and likely they’ll see these ads a disturbance, then blame Yahoo.

Already the user base was distressed over the impending acquisition, some leaving in droves for WordPress after the fact, and today a minor change to the Tumblr dashboard involving the relocation of the Reblog and Notes buttons has them hand-wringing again. Those changes rolled out yesterday, and today have reached 100 percent of Tumblr’s user base. The company says the buttons were moved for consistency between mobile and web.

These buttons used to be at the top of posts on the web dashboard, and now they’re on the bottom – I know, right? The horror! And if you think that’s bad, just wait until the kids see these new ads.

Tumblr’s teenaged audience has led to explosive growth for the company, but those users are also known to be fickle (and dramatic), which makes every change that Yahoo/Tumblr enacts going forward risky. It still remains to be seen whether or not the audience will stick around as the site becomes less of an online hideout, and more ad-driven in the future.

Today, I have to say goodbye to my current home, TechCrunch. I’ve not only gotten the opportunity to work with this amazing team as a writer and Community Director, but I’ve been able to enjoy it as a reader since June 11th, 2005. I’ll continue to be a reader.

Thus, with every goodbye comes a hello. I’m proud to announce that in the next few weeks I’ll be going to a company that I’m really excited about, Yahoo! There is a lot happening there, and the opportunity to work with Marissa Mayer and the corporate communications team was too good to pass up. I believe that there are things, yes, purple things, coming out of Sunnyvale that will excite people in every corner of the world.

Writing about technology has always been a happy accident for me. I’ve been obsessed with technology since I was twelve years old, never focusing on one specific area. I tried being a programmer, but I was too overly protective of my work to ever ship a line of code. Therefore, I’ve done just about everything else but that.

The goodbye part is difficult, but I feel like I’m leaving at the top of my game. Never in a million years did I think that I’d be publishing my thoughts on one of the top tech blogs on the Internet, TechCrunch. Every single time that I hit the publish button, I got butterflies in my stomach, because I knew that I was bringing you interesting news and facts about companies that you, the readers, follow. I was able to be a part of a team that wants to help advance technology by informing all of you on what’s hot.

To me, reading about a company on TechCrunch has always felt like hearing a new band on the radio. You knew that behind the scenes there were people who heard everything about every company known to man, but the news that got to the front page of the site was special. Being a part of that process will be something that I miss.

Now I get to be back “behind the music,” seeing everything as it happens and making sure that everyone knows about it…this time, I get to focus on Yahoo! It won’t be boring, I promise you that.

Without getting ridiculously mushy, I’d like to thank the entire team at TechCrunch, especially our amazing co-editors Alexia Tsotsis and Eric Eldon. When I came to TechCrunch, a lot of people asked me “Why would you do that?” I imagine that I’ll get a similar response from the same people with this move to Yahoo, but I’ll answer it the same way: “You’ll see.” In TechCrunch’s case, they saw. It’s been an awesome ride.

Since it wouldn’t be TechCrunch without some type of conflicts, perceived or real, it’s safe to say that this serves as my disclosure. I’ll keep disclosing in posts where I’m conflicted over the next two weeks, because yeah, I’m going into PR at Yahoo. I’ll see what I can do about the exclamation mark.

Thank you TechCrunch readers and commenters, you’ve always made everything more interesting.

There go those butterflies again.

Amazon has reportedly submitted plans for a new futuristic headquarters in Seattle that combines a skyscraper and a tri-sphere, bio-dome-like structure. According to the plans, the structure will be able to hold various forms of plant life and become a place where employees can “work and socialize in a more natural, park-like setting.”

Because, God forbid, employees walk to the park that’s three blocks away.

Here’s an excerpt from the plans (also, hat tip to GeekWire for the find):

While the form of the building will be visually reminiscent of a greenhouse or conservatory, plant material will be selected for its ability to co-exist in a microclimate that also suits people. To encourage growth and maintain the health of the plants, the building’s interior will include high bay spaces on five floors totaling approximately 65,000 SF and capable of accommodating mature trees. The exterior enclosure will be highly transparent and be composed primarily of multiple layers of glass supported by a metal framework. In addition to a variety of workplace environments, the facility will incorporate dining, meeting and lounge spaces, as well as a variety of botanical zonesmodeled on montane ecologies found around the globe. The building will be anchored at either end by publically accessible retail spaces entered from 6th and 7th Avenues.

Generally, it all sounds very cool and very futuristic and very trendy (read: Apple did the whole “plans for a spaceship” thing ages ago). However, it’s interesting to see how the biggest companies in tech are tackling the issue of working in an office or with a more loose structure.

Remember, everyone made a pretty big deal out of Marissa Mayer’s recent policy change that requires all Yahoo employees to work in an office. And just recently she announced that Yahoo would be taking up space in the Times building in New York’s Times Square, which is capable of housing up to 700 employees.

As it stands now, all of the big four tech companies — Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon — favor keeping employees in the office.

Google has one of the best campuses you could dream of, both in Mountain View and in New York, feeding employees free lunch from world-renowned chefs. Apple is working to build out one of Steve Jobs’ final projects, a new spaceship office. Facebook has the same diversions: chess boards, and video games, and basketball courts, and free lunch.

So of course, the fourth horseman in the race, Amazon is devising its own tricks to keep employees at the office as long as possible. It’s a win-win: Employees do more and better work due to a pleasing and comfortable work environment, and employers get more, and better work, out of their employees.

Also, there’s a perfectly good park just three blocks from the new campus.

Here’s the full set of plans:

Amazon’s new HQ design by John Cook

[Biodome rendering via NBBJ]

Tumblr’s “Literary Community Organizer” Rachel Fershleiser has family who read TechCrunch. And Tumblr founder David Karp thinks it’s the “greatest thing.”

So do we.

Update: We originally thought this email was a missive from Karp’s family to Karp. Thank you Scott Kidder for setting us straight.

How silly is @TechCrunch? They confuse emails to @RachelFersh with emails to @DavidKarp techcrunch.com/2013/05/21/all…—
Scott Kidder (@skidder) May 22, 2013

via “Tublr”, TC

Image Tumblr

The bookend to Yahoo’s Big News Day — a major refresh of its photo sharing site Flickr — will see the company drop its Flickr Pro pricing tiers as part of a bid to compete better with Facebook/Instagram and the rest of the crowded market in the online photo space. But it is not getting rid of paid tiers altogether: it’s keeping an ad-free tier, called Ad Free, as well as a tier for power users, doublr, respectively priced at $49.99 and $499.99 for a year of use.

The Ad Free service, at $49.99, will do away with the advertising the runs along the right side of the current photo feed — and if today’s discussion of what Yahoo intends to do with ads on Tumblr is any indication, ads that may be appearing soon within your photo streams.

The doublr service (again with those dropped vowels… this had to have played some small role in warming the company to buying Tumblr), priced at $499.99, gives users 1 terabyte of extra space, on top of the 1 terabyte that they will already get free as part of a Yahoo account.

The Pro tiers — priced at $6.95 for three months, $24.95 for 12 months and $44.95 for two years — included unlimited uploads and storage, as well as no ads, and a particularly mean-spirited allowance: those who did upload pictures could download more than just a smaller version of them. (Meaning: those who didn’t pay up wouldn’t get the full copies until they did. Their originals have always been stored by Flickr.)

From what we understand from a person close to Flickr, dropping Pro isn’t going to make much difference to the company because Pro never did very well.

“It has always been a relatively small percentage of the overall user base,” our contact says, adding that while now-distant past CEO Terry Semel had made a big push on premium services, after his departure (and actually during his time) there was “virtually no investment made” in trying to develop or push the Pro tier.

Nevertheless, there are now currently Pro users wondering how exactly Yahoo will be compensating them for the rest of their annual subscriptions. Yahoo notes that as part of the changes it will be removing “pro” badges beside people’s names and people can no longer gift pro subscriptions. Strangely, in a bit of an AOL subscription move, Yahoo says it will continue to offer renewable subscriptions to pro to “Recurring Pro users.”

The Pro tier did have another role to play. Today, CEO Marissa Mayer recounted how the small-image download was what prompted her to rethink Flickr altogether. “When we looked across our services we asked, why are we doing that? That started a thought experiment,” she said. The decision was that Flickr no longer wanted to offer “degraded” images. “We keep your images and you have high resolution images everywhere which is a huge differentiator.”

But in the age of Dropbox, BitTorrent, Mega and more, there are so many places to store pictures online today: will anyone really want to pay such a premium price for that place to be Flickr and Yahoo? In any case, as one person has pointed out already, why users wouldn’t just register for two accounts rather than pay for the extra space?

In the meantime, Flickr users are taking a page from the Tumblr book of user reviews, and laying out their vitriol about the changes over here.

It’s easy to forget that Yahoo has had a long on-again-off-again love affair with online video. Remember Broadcast.com, which kicked off the Mark Cuban Era? But you might not remember that, because other online video platforms long ago left Yahoo in the proverbial dust. Today, as Yahoo streamed its Flickr product and Tumblr acquisition announcements, we were given a demonstration of why Yahoo has been left in the dust — and why it’s had to turn to acquisitions for help in, well, nearly every department.

The event was nearly impossible to watch. Because, well, you know, Yahoo! As you’ve heard by now, Yahoo has been on an impressive buying spree over the last month — including, by the way, a scuppered deal to boost its video tech and buy the “YouTube of France,” Dailymotion — snatching up a new company seemingly every week.

But today, the company raised the bar even higher with the $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr, hoping to turn back the clock and gain access to Tumblr’s millions of young users.

The company held a media event in New York City this afternoon to formally announce the acquisition — along with sharing the news that it will be moving into new digs in Times Square — but something was stealing the spotlight from Mayor Bloomberg and Marissa Mayer. And that would be Yahoo’s questionable video tech. Those who watched the event from home spent most of that time enjoying a hiccupy stream. Or none at all.

You can see the error message above. The video-streaming technology is Yahoo’s own, running through Yahoo! Screen, first launched back in 2006, renamed Screen from Yahoo Video. With all the acquisitions Yahoo has been making of late, it makes one think that, for its next acquisition, Yahoo should go for some new video technology. Of course, after Tumblr, it may be broke.

But, come on, Yahoo has somehow become the Rudy story of the tech industry. At the very least, someone should launch a Kickstarter page so that it can continue to make acquisitions.

Yahoo’s Flickr photo-sharing service is now offering one full terabyte for users, enough storage space to hold whole swathes of the world’s photos. The service is offering this benefit in addition to its full resolution photo storage service.

While the average user will probably not touch the outer limits of this storage space in a lifetime, this alone is probably enough to draw dedicated photographers to the service and, more important, bring lapsed users back to the Yahoo fold.

This move is important. Given the odd nature of most photo sharing services, you are either limited to a few dozen gigabytes or, in the case of Instagram and other mobile services, an unstated upper limit that is not part of the marketing collateral. While I don’t doubt that Google or Facebook could make the terabyte claim in the near future, being first to market with this particular feature is an important milestone.

This move is quite clearly a play by Yahoo to make its wares relevant. The long-beleaguered Flickr has at once enthralled and frustrated pro users with claims of abandonment by the web giant.

As Marissa Mayer noted in her presentation, this is about “bringing lifetimes of beauty into Flickr.” It’s also about convincing casual photographers to trust Flickr as a universal shoebox for their old snaps – a lucrative and surprisingly important thing to be.

The new Flickr is live.

Smack-dab in the middle of Yahoo-Tumblr aqcuisition day, Yahoo is holding a major press event here in NYC. But announcements coming out of this event aren’t related to Tumblr as much as Flickr, the photo-sharing database and social network acquired by Yahoo in March of 2005 for $35 million.

Today, Flickr gets a huge revamp including a totally new look and feel, focused on three different things. First, there are no more bits of text or blue links, but rather a grid layout of huge pictures in full resolution.

Second, stemming from the updated iOS app recently, which yielded 25 percent more uploads, the company is also announcing a brand new Android experience, catching the Google version of the Flickr app up to the iOS version.

Finally, Flickr looks to get even “biggr.” The company is expanding storage for your photos, by quite a bit. Flickr is offering 1 terabyte of free storage for every Flickr user. Yahoo made it clear that no other Internet company in the world offers a free terabyte of storage. That’s the equivalent of 537,731 photos.

In terms of the UI redesign, the new photostream has a justified format grid layout, complete with a header photo and a Timeline-style profile for users. On the top left, next to the photostream button, you can also click into Favorites and Sets.

But what are photos without sharing? Users have an easy share button to send photos out on any of their favorite social networks, including Tumblr.

Most importantly, Flickr has fiddled with the picture page to give a black background and a fullscreen image for every single photo page. The site has been revamped to give easy-click access to the next photo in the set or photostream, even in full-screen mode.

Adam Cahan, SVP of Mobile and Emerging products at Yahoo, announced that Flickr currently has 89 million users who have shared over 8 billion photos. That’s a lot of pictures.

Mayer explained that most of the changes happening at Yahoo concerns users’ daily habits, which explains why the company has put so much focus on the Yahoo Home Page, Yahoo mail, and the Yahoo weather app. In a number of ways, these products are energized and enhanced by photos.

Yahoo’s, and particularly Marissa Mayer’s, tweaks to its overall service and the Flickr experience has helped build out both platforms, but there are still questions over Flickr’s ability to generate revenue and, perhaps more importantly, compete with photo-sharing behemoth Instagram.

It’s worth noting the timing here: Yahoo just bought out one of the biggest and most popular blogging platforms around, and Flickr is a huge resource for blogs in general. But how will Yahoo integrate the two to build out use of both and make both experiences more seamless?

“We have a nice set of the creator brands,” said Mayer. “Photographers and writers. With that, there is natural set of opportunities that arise between Flickr and Tumblr and we’ll deal with that as it comes.”

Alongside Flickr’s product announcement news, Mayer revealed that the company would be setting up shop at a new NY office in Times Square, in the New York Times building, which will hold all 500 employees based in NY, along with room for expansion to 200 more employees.

Today has been quite a roller coaster ride for Yahoo — the company put days of reports and rumors to rest this morning when it confirmed that it would acquire the social blogging platform Tumblr for $1.1 billion, and now CEO Marissa Mayer has confirmed that Yahoo’s New York employees will now be moving.

They’ll all soon be working right around the corner from Times Square in the same building that used to house the New York Times (229 West 43rd Street, to be more specific).

The move is meant to unite the nearly 500 Yahoo employees that are currently split among three existing locations in New York City, though Mayer made it very clear that the newly acquired Tumblr team wouldn’t be folks roped into working out of the central office — David Karp and the rest of the team will continue to work out of their 10th floor office near Gramercy Park. This whole thing is reminiscent of Mayer’s edict that saw the end of remote working for long-time Yahooligans. In a memo issued by Yahoo human resources head Jackie Reses back earlier this year, it was revealed the brass though that “speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home.”

While that’s unlikely to be the case here, Mayer has shown herself to be a vocal proponent of the sort of work that can be done by bringing employees together, and it seems the Yahoo New York team is only slated to grow from there. Just before New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg took the podium to deliver a few remarks, Mayer noted that the space the team will soon move into can hold an additional 200 or so people, and a post on the official Yahoo Tumblr account (that was fast) indicated that the company wants to pump up its New York staff “by up to 60 percent.”

Of course, this isn’t the only news that Mayer and company have in store for us this evening — some prominent Flickr signage means that there’s some product news in the pipeline as well.

UPDATE: Mayer just pulled back the curtain on the new and improved Flickr, and it is awesome.

How much of Tumblr is porn, and what is Yahoo going to do about it? On the latter, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer spoke to its plans for addressing content that is not “brand safe” earlier this morning on a call about its $1.1 billion acquisition of the site, saying that Yahoo will need to have “good tools for retargeting,” and will “monetize in a way that is tasteful.” But as for the former, it’s often been something of a black box – there simply wasn’t publicly available data.

However, now, we may have some answers. According to an analysis of Tumblr’s 200,000 most-visited domains, 22,775 of them are adult – or 11.4 percent. The analysis was performed by web measurement firm SimilarGroup, a company which raised $2.5 million earlier this year with the intention of competing with Alexa’s stronghold in web rankings.

The measurement firm analyzed the volume of visits to these adult subdomains, and found that 16.6 percent of the traffic that visits Tumblr takes place on adult blogs.

In addition, 22.37 percent of incoming referral traffic from external sites to Tumblr is from adult websites, making that the leading category for referrals. Meanwhile, 8.02 percent of outbound traffic from Tumblr goes to adult websites.

Below are some screenshots from SimilarWeb Pro, which shows Tumblr data from the past year (May 2012 to April 2013), detailing the breakdown of referrals and outgoing links:

Neither Tumblr nor Yahoo responded to requests for comment, as of publication time.

Tumblr’s secret to successful growth back in the early days, was in fact, its adult content. In some circles (read: mainstream users, typically men), it’s what the site is still known for today. Anecdotally, this is the kind of thing I hear all the time when I bring up Tumblr among members of this not-so-tech-savvy group: “Oh, you mean that porn site?” Uh-huh.

To be fair, any site that relies on user-generated content is going to have a porn problem – even Instagram and Pinterest get dirty at times. But Tumblr seems to be better known for it than the others.

Still, Mayer is right – it’s a matter of targeting Tumblr’s ads correctly when they do go live, to make sure that porn and brands are not living side-by-side on the same page.

All Things D broke down why Tumblr’s porn stash is not a problem for Yahoo, explaining that Tumblr’s ads appear in the sidebar of the Dashboard – the home page feed where people follow the blogs they’re following. Another type of advertisement called “spotlight” ads, promotes Tumblr blogs in a directory of suggested account. Neither of these types of ads are hitting the users who come to Tumblr for the adult fare.

That’s because, users in search of Tumblr’s adult content are usually doing just that – searching. (And with the “Safe Search” filter turned off, course.) These folks don’t see Tumblr’s ads now unless they actually subscribe to adult sites. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be immune to all the ads in the future.

Mayer also discussed today Yahoo’s future advertising plans, saying that it may work with bloggers to provide ads that run with their permission, and plans to integrate Yahoo’s search functionality on Tumblr’s site, too. In other words, Yahoo will need to be very careful when rolling out its additional ad formats to make sure brands and pornography don’t get too tangled up.

After all, it would only take one screenshot of some supposedly family-friendly household name next to a video of “hott girlz doing xyz” to cause major controversy and possibly harm to Tumblr’s own brand.

Currently, brands marketing on Tumblr aren’t worried about the adult content, says Hayes Davis, CEO of Union Metrics, whose company now tracks over a 100 million events on Tumblr per day, including posts, reblogs and likes, out of Tumblr’s over 107 million blogs and 50 billion total blogs.

“Tumblr is becoming a strategically important marketing channel for these brands, and they are making large investments in the platform. Just this year, we’ve signed up brands and agencies that represent myriad industries, including higher education, entertainment, fashion and beauty, sports, consumer products, travel, technology, news and retail,” says Davis.

Marketers love the viral engagement and staying power around branded content on Tumblr, he explains, saying that posts live for far longer on the site than on other networks. That data point was also hinted at in Tumblr’s own reveal today that out of the 50 billion blog posts on the site today, only 5 billion are original content – the rest, presumably, being the re-blogs (re-sharing another’s content on your own blog).

But as for the NSFW content, according to Union Metrics, “it frankly never comes up in any of our discussions.”

Time will tell if that still remains the case in the future.

Also of note? Mayer just blogged this:

After announcing its deal to acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion, mostly in cash, Yahoo today started to lay out some of the details for how it intends to make use of the property while trying to stick to its promise “not to screw it up.” Expect more advertising by next year as well as more Tumblr content on Yahoo properties, but more of a cautious step as to how Yahoo will deal with some of Tumblr’s more NSFW content.

Here are some of the more interesting details revealed in the call:

What are Tumblr ads going to look like? Tumblr apparently made only $13 million in revenues last year but CEO David Karp apparently thinks the site is “ready” to make more now that it understands its users, according to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. But she also noted that they will be working from a challenged position, not just because of user resistance but because Karp himself has been “skeptical” about online ads.

In the conference call, Mayer made an early reference to how Tumblr would be able to make good use of Yahoo’s advertising technology, in ways that fit Tumblr’s so-far successful, image-based, quick-blogging, youth-oriented format — what she called “native advertising formats.”

As one example, she pointed to an ad format that Yahoo launched at the end of April, in-stream ads that it runs on its news pages. “On Tumblr we feel we can monetize in ways that are meaningful and add to user experience,” she said. She cited the Tumblr dashboard, or as she called it, the inbox for the blogs you follow. “Today Tumblr already does some ads in that feed. We would like to look at that and understand how to introduce more ads where the ads fit the expectations and follow that form and function.” She also noted that Yahoo may possibly work with bloggers to provide ads that will be run with their permission.

On top of this, expect to see more search ads: there are also plans to integrate Yahoo’s search functionality into the site as well. “We think there is a complelling search story,” said Mayer. “Their body is 50b posts and 5 billion posts of original content so search is already vast. We see an opportunity to integrate with search and provide that. That’s one area we are excited by the acquisition.”

Throughout this, a focus on trying to be Tumblr-centric about whatever Yahoo tries to do there. “It’s not a choice between creativity and monetization,” insisted Mayer.

So when are those ads coming? CFO Ken Goldman said that ad revenues from Tumblr will be “modest” this year — the acquisition is not expected to close until the second of of 2013 — but that they will “ramp up” in 2014 “and beyond.” “We do think those revenues will start monetizing materially [and] will contribute to revevenues in 2014 and beyond,” he said on the call, “not just standalone for Tumblr but also incrementally, helping Yahoo to growth.”

Porn? The NSFW, notorious part of Tumblr was never referred to by name, but an analyst did ask about what Yahoo, while courting mainstream brands to market to that attractive Tumblr audience, would do about content that is not “brand safe”. “The richness and breadth of the content… is what makes it more exciting,” enthused Mayer. “In terms of addressing concerns around brand safety we need to have good tools for retargeting.” [Another acquisition, methinks? In any case, no outright announcement that Yahoo intends to get rid of all those sites that Tumblr has more or less accepted into the fold.]

Mayer continued: “Tumblr is now at the point that they do know what it is and what makes sense to monetize in way that is tasteful.” She also mentioned due diligence but also something else, effectively implying that Yahoo will figure out a way of getting around the NSFW content and serving ads where they want them to go, because that’s what the advertisers want: “There are a lot of marketers eager to participate in Tumblr platform and the demographics,” she said.

What does the $1.1 billion “substantially in cash” mean? Goldman noted that it’s effectively an all-cash deal, save for some shares in Yahoo for David Karp. He also noted that Yahoo still has “ample cash” for more acquisitions and investments, to the tune of about $6.2 billion. These will not likely be along the lines of Tumblr in terms of size. “This is an exceptional company and team,” she said of Tumblr. At 300 million monthly unique users, Yahoo is paying about $3.67 per user for the acquisition.

Complementary properties. Mayer made a lot of the fact that Tumblr and Yahoo actually fit “really beautifully together,” like South America and Africa, in her words. In addition to Yahoo skewing older and Tumblr skewing younger, “We are strong on sports, finance and news; Tumblr’s strong on architeture, travel and fashion. We need great tools for content publishing and creation. They have them. Tumblr prides itself as a home for brands. Yahoo is all about brands.”

Tumblr comes to Yahoo. While a lot of the expectation so far has been about how Yahoo may mess up or spiff up or monetize up Tumblr, another theme that emerged during the call was the idea of Tumblr content going out to Yahoo properties — a way of attracting users to Yahoo that may not have gone there before.

“Our strategy is to let Tumblr be Tumblr,” said Mayer. “There are some who will always prefer Tumblr and will never come to Yahoo. [But] as we pull Tumblr content into our news feed and media experiences it will cause them to become that much more interesting and richer and will cause more to come to Yahoo. I imagine engagement will improve as we incorporate that content.”

Flickr. There is a separate news conference today that will likely concentrate on updates to Flickr, but today Mayer appeared to douse out speculation that it will be a move to begin integrating its online photo site with Tumblr in any way: “In terms of how the content of Tumblr evolves it depends on the creators,” Mayer said in answer to a question of what this acquisition will mean for Flickr. “It’s something that we will turn our attention to in the future. It will provide great storage, but we will see how those two cousins should relate to each other.

Image: Tumblr (where else)

In what can only be called an exodus, WordPress’ co-founder Matt Mullenweg posted on his blog Sunday night that over 72,000 new blog posts were imported within a single hour. This is a massive spike considering that WordPress usually just sees 400 to 600 imported posts on most Sundays. It’s a tiny percentage of Tumblr’s 50.9B posts but it’s an important consideration that Tumblr – and now Yahoo – cannot ignore.

Yahoo is officially buying Tumblr for a lot of cash. $1.1 billion to be precise. This move makes a few people very happy and very rich. But Tumblr’s content creators – you and me – are the primary reason Yahoo is buying the site. Unfortunately, that content engine isn’t very happy.

WordPress will likely have another banner day as even more Tumblr users look for alternative platforms to host their saucy Brony slashfic.

Tumblr is currently an unfettered corner of the Internet. Nearly anything goes, and with that users have enjoyed this freedom to create a vast variety of blogs and sites. Anything from questionable pornography to vegan cooking blogs are hosted on Tumblr. While Yahoo promises to keep Tumblr independent, it’s unclear whether this includes maintaining Tumblr’s loose posting guidelines.

This has happened before. A small percentage of Instagram users loudly quit the service when Facebook purchased the social network. Likewise, Facebook is losing users as it becomes an established service. WordPress is likely going to be the largest benefactor of Tumblr’s exodus. As Mullenweg notes, the two services have long enjoyed a close relationship. It only takes a few clicks to import a Tumblr site to a WordPress install.

Tumblr users are afraid Yahoo is going to ruin it. After all, Yahoo has set that precedent after scooping up sites like Geocities and del.icio.us only to abandon development and let the sites rot in the Internet sun. But the Yahoo of today is not the Yahoo of yesterday.

Yahoo is booming under Marissa Mayer. The company is a on buying spree, scooping up hot startups, resulting in the acquisition of content, talent, and, press coverage. If anything, Wall Street likes what Yahoo is doing as the company’s stock price is up nearly 71% for the year. But despite Yahoo’s frank promise that it will not screw up Tumblr, a social network is only as strong as its users and in a very direct way, Yahoo is already screwing up Tumblr.

Yahoo has now officially confirmed that it is buying blogging platform Tumblr for $1.1 billion mostly in cash, after reports on an impending deal first surfaced last week. It says it will keep it as an independent company, with founder David Karp at the helm as CEO. “The product, service and brand will continue to be defined and developed separately with the same Tumblr irreverence, wit, and commitment to empower creators,” it writes.

The deal will close in the second half of this year.

With a lot of negative comments coming in from Tumblr users in lead-up to the deal, and some competitors claiming that they’re witnessing a kind of exodus from Tumblr as a result, Karp has also weighed in with his own announcement about the deal, emphasizing the same independence line: “We’re not turning purple,” he wrote:

“We’re not turning purple. Our headquarters isn’t moving. Our team isn’t changing. Our roadmap isn’t changing. And our mission – to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve – certainly isn’t changing.”

Karp also points out that Tumblr, joining up with the “original Internet company,” will be getting more resources to create the “ultimate creative canvas.” Some users have complained about certain features around the site, such as how video works, so the implication here is that areas like this will be addressed faster from now on, but — again — in a way that “doesn’t compromise the community and product we love.”

To get into the spirit of things, Marissa Mayer has fired up her very own Tumblr account and has posted on the news herself, complete with her own GIF to commemorate the deal (and, yes, also respond to the negativity):

Although both Karp and Mayer are pushing hard on the “we will not screw this up” line, there are of course business reasons behind it.

The deal, as many have pointed out, will give Yahoo not just access to more younger users (Tumblr is strongest in the 18-24 age bracket), but a fast-growing number of consumers who are in general very engaged online. Yahoo notes that Tumblr currently has 300 million monthly unique visitors and is growing by 120,000 signups every day, “one of the fastest-growing media networks in the world” with 900 posts per second and 24 billion minutes spent on site each month. There is also a strong mobile story that fits with Yahoo’s new emphasis on that platform: more than half of Tumblr’s mobile users using the mobile app on an average of 7 sessions per day.

Yahoo says it expects Tumblr to expand Yahoo!’s audience by 50% to more than a billion monthly visitors, and to grow traffic by approximately 20%.

That’s presuming there will be advertising against all of that content and all of those users. While Yahoo and Tumblr say that we won’t be seeing the birth of Yahooblr here, it’s also careful to note that advertising and Yahoo’s other monetizing services will most certainly be finding a place at Tumblr.

Tumblr, it appears, will be using Yahoo’s “personalization technology” and search infrastructure in its services to help users find content that fits their interests better. This is directly connected to advertising: “In turn, Tumblr brings 50 billion blog posts (and 75 million more arriving each day) to Yahoo!’s media network and search experiences,” Yahoo writes. Still, these apparently won’t be standard Yahoo display ads like the ones we see everywhere else: “The two companies will also work together to create advertising opportunities that are seamless and enhance the user experience.”

Tumblr has been working on services like this for some time, for example with its Spotlight highlighting Tumblrs from brands. This last year helped the company make some $13 million in revenues — not much by Yahoo standards. It will be interesting to see whether Yahoo will be able to raise that figure without lowering the others around usage that attracted it to Tumblr in the first place.

The companies are holding a conference call at 9am Eastern time; we’ll be listening in and updating from that.