My Lean In story - one week later
About a week ago I shared my Lean In story and I’ve been surprised - in a good way - to read all of the comments from people who knew my parents are taking the time to reach out and say hello. People I’ve never heard of or haven’t heard from in years have found the post and left a comment.
Everything cynical I ever thought about whether online connections could be genuinely meaningful has disappeared reading the comments Merici Vinton’s #leanin story. People are pretty extraordinary.
Thanks for that.
I’m delighted to announce that we’ve reached an agreement to acquire Tumblr!
We promise not to screw it up. Tumblr is incredibly special and has a great thing going. We will operate Tumblr independently. David Karp will remain CEO. The product roadmap, their team, their wit and irreverence will all remain the same as will their mission to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve. Yahoo! will help Tumblr get even better, faster.
Tumblr has built an amazing place to follow the world’s creators. From art to architecture, fashion to food, Tumblr hosts 105 million different blogs. With more than 300 million monthly unique visitors and 120,000 signups every day, Tumblr is one of thefastest-growing media networks in the world. Tumblr sees 900 posts per second (!) and 24 billion minutes spent onsite each month. On mobile, more than half of Tumblr’s users are using the mobile app, and those users do an average of 7 sessions per day. Tumblr’s tremendous popularity and engagement among creators, curators and audiences of all ages brings a significant new community of users to the Yahoo! network. The combination of Tumblr+Yahoo! could grow Yahoo!’s audience by 50% to more than a billion monthly visitors, and could grow traffic by approximately 20%.
In terms of working together, Tumblr can deploy Yahoo!’s personalization technology and search infrastructure to help its users discover creators, bloggers, and content they’ll love. In turn, Tumblr brings 50 billion blog posts (and 75 million more arriving each day) to Yahoo!’s media network and search experiences. The two companies will also work together to create advertising opportunities that are seamless and enhance user experience.
As I’ve said before, companies are all about people. Getting to know the Tumblr team has been really amazing. I’ve long held the view that in all things art and design, you can feel the spirit and demeanor of those who create them. That’s why it was no surprise to me that David Karp is one of the nicest, most empathetic people I’ve ever met. He’s also one of the most perceptive, capable entrepreneurs I’ve worked with. His respect for Tumblr’s community of creators is awesome, and I’m absolutely delighted to have him and his entire team join Yahoo!.
Both Tumblr and Yahoo! share a vision to make the Internet the ultimate creative canvas by focusing on users, design — and building experiences that delight and inspire the world every day.
“We promise not to screw it up.”
Potluck and Pabst for new consumer crusaders
Employees had taped paper snowflakes to the windows and hung a strand of white Christmas lights from the ceiling. Soft music played from an iPod, and a plastic penguin greeted guests arriving from their cubicles two floors below. The potluck offerings stretched across several tables - homemade…
No big deal, shouted one staffer as the laughter subsided, “We’re a start-up.” - Merici Vinton
To all the mothers and mothers to be, we say “thank you” for showing us what the freedom to love really means.
Love, Freedom to Marry
getting an education
Last week I started my new role and project: I am joining the A World At School initiative as Senior Advisor and Director of Digital. A World at School is a new organization that solely exists to work towards achieving the UN’s second Millennium Goal - getting the 61 million kids who are out of school…into school. And working to get quality education to those who don’t yet have it. We were founded by the children’s charity, PiggyBankKids, led by Sarah Brown, who previously worked on the amazing and successful global health campaign around maternal mortality. Additionally, we are supported by the UN Education Envoy, former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Our approach is targeted and combines ongoing education efforts at the highest levels of governments and NGOs alike with the grassroots efforts of individuals and impactful projects happening globally. We are going to start with the 10 countries that have the highest number of children out of school and work with them on projects that will help us get closer to achieving the Milllenium Development Goal.
In addition to digital, I will also be building partnerships with ed tech organizations and awesome projects that work to get girls in to STEM education. If this is you or someone you know or someone you think you know, please ping me (merici at aworldatschool dot org).
For me, it’s a really cool/terrifying challenge - I am thrilled to work on a global, macro campaign (#meta). It’s great because Gordon and Sarah (and our partners) are incredibly committed with a strong emphasis on impact that I know we will be able to move this campaign forward. [We will also be working in country with partners - so while our mission is global, we are trying to make it as local as possible] [probably. it’s only my 5th day.] Also, can I just say how cool it is to work with a kickass lady? This is my first time having a direct supervisor who is a woman (!!??!) and there needs to be more of us in management.
I’m totally down to talk about our work and we are always looking for more people to get involved - as partners, fans, noisy campaigners - so ping me.
Let’s do this.
aworldatschool.org
@aworldatschool
facebook.com/AWorldAtSchool
"I did that"
“You should bring something into the world that wasn’t in the world before. It doesn’t matter what that is. It doesn’t matter if it’s a table or a film or gardening — everyone should create. You should do something, then sit back and say, “I did that.’”
- Ricky Gervais
(via @swissmiss)
