Marissa Mayer. Patrick McMullan/Sipa USA (Sipa via AP Images)

Yahoo just announced that it would be buying blogging site Tumblr for $1.1 billion. Now the company is already talking about purchasing the online broadcaster Hulu for somewhere in the $600 million to $800 million range.

Hulu is currently owned by Disney, Comcast, and News Corp. A few years back, Yahoo tried unsuccessfully to buy YouTube. That company ultimately went to Google. So AllThingsD suspects that this is Yahoo’s second stab at making a big purchase in the online video space. The ultimate price of the company will come down to factors like how long content on the site is licensed for. Time Warner Cable, DirecTV, and a number of private equity groups including Silver Lake Partners are also in the bidding war. The owners would like to get between $1 billion and $2 billion for the site.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer could also be looking to purchase two other companies, each costing in the $150 million and $200 million range. But when the Tumblr sale was announced, she said she’d want to take a break from the buying game. But, she added “never say never” on another deal. So BuzzFeed wonders whether Mayer is just saying words with no meaning. Actually what she’s doing, Peter Lauria writes, is engaging in what he calls “CEO deal doublespeak.” He says:

Mayer’s comments are designed to reassure investors that Yahoo will be methodical and thoughtful about how it spends its money. In effect, she is saying the company doesn’t plan to do deals just to do deals. They will be thoughtful about what companies they buy, making sure they fit with Yahoo’s overall mission and strategic plan. Such reassurance gives investors confidence to stick with the stock, which is up about 70 percent since Mayer came aboard last year.

At the same time, her comments leave the door open to being opportunistic.

This is something we can use in our own professional lives. When you’re dealing with a boss or a client, they want to know that whatever they’re talking about at the moment has your undivided attention. You’ve got tunnel vision for this project and this is what you’ll be working on with an update to come! But you know that an hour later, when they come back with a new request or something marked “PRIORITY,” you’ll immediately turn your attention in order to handle this new project. If it’s small, you’ll bang it out and get it done. If it’s a longer-term project, you’ll find a way to juggle the two.

Your clients and managers are your investors (they’re the ones signing the checks right?) and they need to be reassured that you’re a winning stock. Sure, there are times when you have to say no. If there are too many extra projects and interruptions, you have to draw the line. But sometimes, responding in a reassuring way then going back to your desk and doing what needs to be done to keep things running successfully is the way you have to handle things.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. (AP Foto/Keystone, Laurent Gillieron)

Yahoo is expected to announce the $1.1 billion purchase of blogging site Tumblr, the seventh acquisition under Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and the largest to date, according to The New York Times.

Yahoo continues to struggle to catch up to online competitors like Google after once being a frontrunner and pioneer in the tech space. Tumblr could help the company make inroads with younger users and advertisers, who have migrated to other sites.

However, Yahoo has a history of buying popular companies and then watching them die, as in the case of photo site Flickr. That was beloved in its time and has now been overtaken by Instagram, another company that was bought for a billion dollars, that one by Facebook.

The question remains whether Tumblr will actually make Yahoo any money. On its own, it has struggled to do so. But given the efforts to overhaul the company, the plan could be to bring it in and then use it to draw profits. Mayer has already, notably, made lots of changes internally at Yahoo, including a ban on telecommuting. Last week, Business Insider noted that the company has been purchasing failed mobile companies in order to acquire their talent. (One VC notes this could be a bad move.)

Tumblr has 108 million active blogs with tons of users who are blogging and visiting regularly. However, the company hasn’t been able to crack mobile. According to AllThingsD, Yahoo doesn’t expect to make money from Tumblr right off the bat. And there will be more ads on Tumblr, much to the dismay of many regulars, we’re sure. Yahoo said on a conference call today that they’re not going to “screw things up” with this deal. And since there are some cool Tumblrs out there, we hope so.

So Yahoo’s comeback is still a work in progress, work that’s happening very publicly. Do you think it’s going to be big again?

Patrick McMullan/Sipa USA (Sipa via AP Images)

Just two months after setting off fierce debate about the merits of telecommuting, Yahoo has announced a slate of new perks and benefits for its staffers. On the top of the list is extended maternity and paternity leave. All parents, including fathers now have eight weeks; new moms have 16 weeks.

In addition, parents will receive $500 for necessities, there are gifts for new pet owners, and eight weeks of unpaid leave for employees who make it to five years with the company. This all sounds pretty good, but actually, Yahoo is playing catch up with the rest of Silicon Valley. According to CNN, Google, the company Mayer used to work for, offers all parents seven weeks of paid leave, and between 18 and 22 weeks of maternity leave for mothers. And Facebook offers four months for both parents and $4,000 of “baby cash.”

Mayer herself went back to work two weeks after giving birth to her son on September 30, which everyone commented on (even though it’s none of their business). All of her decisions are watched closely for a variety of reasons: because she’s a woman CEO, because Yahoo was once a major player in the tech space and it’s trying to regain prominence, and because of the attention now being paid to women “leaning in” and “having it all.” Keep in mind, Mayer was pregnant when she accepted the CEO position, so there’s a good chance she felt she had to go back to work as quickly as possibly because she was new to the job.

On the business side, the company’s stock is up 24 percent since the beginning of the year. Mayer herself is being paid $36.6 million in cash and stock for her work.

Research conducted by Kenneth Matos at the Family and Work Institute shows just how far outside the norm these new Yahoo perks are. “Matos’s research shows that only 30 percent of U.S. employers offer paid or unpaid maternity leave that is greater than 12 weeks,” Today’s website says about the data. “Matos also said that 58 percent of employers who provide maternity leave pay new moms for at least some of that time off. Only 14 percent of employers who provide paternity leave pay for some of the dads’ time off.”

Many companies and most states in the US don’t offer very much in the way of paid maternity leave, a rare thing among developed countries. The Today site proposes that the Yahoo changes could spark other developments in this area.

AP Photo/NBC Peter Kramer/NBC/NBC NewsWire

In an effort to reshape Yahoo’s company culture and to spearhead the company’s future in the technology industry, Yahoo President and CEO Marissa Mayer will require teleworking employees to begin reporting to Yahoo offices beginning June 2013. No more working from home! The move has sparked a huge discussion, with many people taking the pro-telecommuting stance.

Still, the 37-year-old Yahoo CEO isn’t the only one in favor of being in the office. Best Buy is following suit.

Is there some method to Mayer’s madness? If you have the option to work you full-time job from home, check out a few reasons why you might want to get your work done at the office instead.

AP Photo/Keystone/Laurent Gillieron

Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer is on the TODAY show now, talking with Savannah Guthrie about everything from the tech company she leads to her work as CEO (a job she’s held since July) to being a new mom. But the real reason she’s making the morning appearance is to announce that the company has a new homepage that freshens up the look and, as Mayer says, personalizes the news presentation.

Calling it a new “experience,” the tech company’s CEO was sure to say that the homepage isn’t so radical that it will be unrecognizable to users. But emphasized the endless scrolling news feature and other features. The upper right shows what’s trending. And as the TODAY site notes, you can log in using your Facebook account in order to more easily share news.

Yahoo has been struggling to regain prominence in recent years, with the company bringing on Mayer for the expressed purpose of shining up the now dull tech giant. The New York Times writes, “Yahoo’s home page has long been a sort of sad reflection of the company. A jazzed-up Craigslist of sorts, the site was often cluttered with low-quality ads and irrelevant content and in no way reflected the fact that Yahoo is one of the most visited sites on the Web. With more than 700 million monthly visitors, Yahoo is still a leading source of information for sports, finance and entertainment.” The article also notes the homepage’s emphasis on all things Yahoo and the upgrades to customization.

The new look should aid with ad sales, which have been falling in recent years. But a new homepage will only be one step towards a bigger Yahoo recovery. We want to see what else Mayer has up her sleeve.

- Google’s Marissa Mayer is named Yahoo’s chief executive. She’s the fifth person to hold the spot in five years. And she’s faced with the daunting task of rebuilding a company that has lost its luster.

-The price of gas dropped in June, a welcome change. However, food prices crept up a bit, a topic we discussed in some detail yesterday.

-Goldman Sachs is creating an in-house bank to lend money to rich people and big corporations. It’s the bank’s attempt to remake its business in the face of harsh economic realities. The company just announced pay cuts, job cuts, and a steep revenue drop — 14 percent — to  $16.6 billion.

-President Obama is hitting his GOP opponent Mitt Romney hard over the former Massachusetts’ governor’s failure to disclose his tax return information. Romney is already reeling from questions about his involvement with Bain Capital, the private equity firm he says he worked with until 1999. Paperwork suggests his involvement with the company may have lasted longer.

-Last week was Savannah Guthrie’s first as co-host of the Today show. And though the program had hoped to retake its longstanding commanding lead in the ratings over GMA with the ouster of Ann Curry, it was not to be. GMA beat Today by 350,000 viewers and came close to overtaking the show in the 25 to 54-year old demographic.

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