Yahoo App Shopping Spree Continues with Purchase of Qwiki
July 2, 2013 — -- On the heels of acquiring Tumblr for $1.1 billion and a series of other technology companies, Yahoo has bought Qwiki, a New York City start-up with a video and media creation app.
Similar to the Tumblr acquisition, Qwiki will remain an independent app.
"The Qwiki app will live on as a standalone entity inside Yahoo!, where we will grow our thriving community and where our team will continue to work to help you share life's best experiences," Qwiki CEO Doug Imbruce said on Qwiki's blog this afternoon.
Qwiki, as it stands now, is an iPhone app that allows users to gather photos, short video clips and other multimedia and create a short, easily-shareable video clips.
It began as a Web-based creation tool. Last year, ABC News partnered with the company to create a handful of Web-based Qwikis.
Yahoo reiterated in its own Tumblr post that the app 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.
Wait, What is Qwiki? An Explainer of the App
The terms of the deal were not officially disclosed by Yahoo, but technology site All Things D reported that Yahoo paid $40 to $50 million for the company. The site was also the first to report that Yahoo was eyeing Tumblr in early May.
In addition to Tumblr, Yahoo has bought a series of other companies and apps since Mayer took the helm as CEO last July. In March, it bought Summly, a news aggregation service, for $30 billion. In May, it bought GoPollGo, an online survey company. It also bought Stampted -- a recommendation engine that allows users to collect their favorite books, restaurants and music -- as well as other smaller mobile app creators.
The acquisitions may seem a bit disjointed, but analysts pointed out that many of them reinforced Yahoo's mobile and media pushes.
"The common thread would be in mobile," Ross Rubin, principal analyst at Reticle Research, told ABC News.
Rubin also explained that many of the acquisitions might be strictly for the talent, or the employees who work at the companies.
Mayer told ABC News after the Tumblr purchase in May that the large-scale acquisition was an exception to her strategy of buying smaller companies.
"You only do an acquisition like this if it really makes sense. The fit between Yahoo and Tumblr is better than almost any acquisition I have seen in terms of the way their offering fits with our offering," Mayer said.
Still, Mayer's vision and what she plans to do with all these companies wasn't entirely clear.
As Rubin said, "She is definitely assembling bricks, but it is unclear what kind of building she wants to build with them, at this point."
Yahoo has a content-sharing partnership with ABC News.
