San Francisco Chronicle’s Benny Evangelista and Brian Solis review Yahoo’s acquisition of Tumblr as a venture to lure a younger crowd.

Adding ‘coolness points’

This year, Yahoo paid $30 million to a British teenager who created a news aggregation app called Summly. But with Tumblr, Mayer is trying to add “coolness points” to a brand that “may have been viewed as the antithesis of cool,” said Brian Solis, principal analyst at San Mateo’s Altimeter Group and author of “What’s the Future of Business.”

“Like Instagram, Millennials are the life-force of Tumblr and Yahoo needs new vehicles to find its way toward a new era of digital relevance,” Solis said in an e-mail.

Yahoo is paying a premium for Tumblr. But Solis said if Mayer and Yahoo “can infuse business expertise into the community without disrupting it, Yahoo and Tumblr will increase revenues that, according to industry forecasts, will help it recoup acquisition costs.”