Yahoo! to buy blog-maker Tumblr for $1.1 billion: Report

Yahoo! board has approved a deal to purchase blogging and social networking site Tumblr for $1.1 billion, a newspaper report said.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has scheduled a news conference in New York on Monday. An invitation in this regard was sent on Friday where Yahoo promised to unveil "something special" on Monday evening in New York. The event is being held in a Times Squares lounge located about two miles from Tumblr's headquarters.

Buying Tumblr would fulfill Mayer's goal of reaching a wider audience on smartphones and tablet computers.

Tumblr serves up a constantly changing collage of stories, photos and other digital content served up by users who are increasingly connecting to the service through its mobile applications. The service is also one of the hottest sites among teens and young adults, a demographic that Mayer, 37, thinks Yahoo needs to do a better job of reaching.

If it's completed, the Tumblr deal would be Mayer's biggest coup - and, at the same time, the biggest risk - since she ended her 13-year career as a key executive at Google Inc. to try to snap Yahoo out of a prolonged malaise that had demoralized employees and investors alike.

Since her arrival, Mayer has been focused on redesigning several Yahoo services and bringing in more mobile engineering talent, primarily by buying a series of small startups.

With agency inputs