Tretakoff Musings

On the heels of today's leaked info that Yahoo is buying Tumblr for $1.1 billion comes the news that some folks think that's too little . Tumblr earned a whopping $13 million in revenue in 2012; that's right; not $30 million, not $300 million: $13 million. Essentially, they are being bought for an almost 85x of their earnings. And someone is complaining? Tumblr offers a lively photo-based blogging service...for free. It is quite active, and has a lot of users, which explains Yahoo's interest. And yes, Tumblr has burned through the cash, all $125 million of it. With 18 whole employees, and millions of users, it still couldn't generate enough revenue to hold on for more than a few more months...and Yahoo gives it a massive exit...and someone is complaining? On the heels of Facebook's completed $1 billion acquisition of Instagram (12 employees), and it's imminent $1 billion acquisition of GPS app Waze (80 employees), it's pretty clear that $1 billi...

As a long-time comics aficionado, I have delightfully enjoyed the renaissance of the superhero movie. Arguably, you could say that it started with Bryan Singer's X-Men , Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins , or even Sam Raimi's Spider-Man . But the one that I feel has really started the absolute frenzy was Jon Favreau's Iron Man : Not only did it do a great job of making a fun movie, with a somewhat believable premise, but it was a perfect blend of characters, action, and, most importantly, comic book story arcs that culminated in the blockbuster, The Avengers. The third Iron Man movie came out a couple of weeks ago, and I finally got to see it. I was pretty excited, as, unlike the previous two, it was written and directed by Shane Black. Who the heck is Shane Black? Glad you asked: virtually every great buddy cop action adventure movie in the 1990's was a Shane Black creation: the Lethal Weapon films, the vastly underrated The Last Boy Scout, the truly magnificen...