Yahoo to buy moviemaking app Qwiki
03 Jul 2013
Yahoo Inc yesterday said that it will buy Qwiki Inc, a mobile app for creating videos in Apple Inc's iPhone, as the once Internet giant continues to make small acquisitions under its new CEO Marissa Mayer.
Yahoo did not disclose the financial terms of the deal, but technology blog AllThingsD reported that the deal was valued between $40 million - $50 million.
Founded in 2011 by CEO Doug Imbruce and Louis Monier, New York-based Qwiki has created an application that converts video and pictures on iPhones into sharable movie clips with music soundtracks.
Yahoo said in a post that Qwiki will remain independent. "We will continue to support the Qwiki app, and the team will join Yahoo! in our New York City office to reimagine Yahoo!'s storytelling experience," said Yahoo.
Since Meyer took the helm in July 2012, she has been making small acquisitions in the mobile and media space as part of her plan to revive Yahoo.
She has so far acquired several start ups, including Alike, Stamped, Snip.it, Summly, an app designed by a British teenager, GoPollGo, PlayerScale, and GhostBird Software.
For all these acquisitions, Yahoo has paid way below $100 million each, but it did splurge about $1 billion in buying popular blogging platform Tumblr.
It is now in the race to buy online video website Hulu, after the French government in May scuttled its plan of buying a majority stake in Dailymotion.