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Posted by on Mar 25, 2013 in Mobile, Startups | 0 comments

Yahoo Acquires Summly

Yahoo Acquires Summly

Today Yahoo has announced the acquisition of mobile news gathering and delivery startup Summly.  The acquisition price was was somewhere close to $30 million, as reported earlier by AllThingsD.  Prior to the acquisition the the company had raised $1.53 million from the likes of: Horizons Ventures, betaworks, Shakil Khan, Matt Mullenweg, Troy Carter and even Yoko Ono. Additionally, Summly was working with News Corp on summarizing their content.

A Yahoo spokesperson said that,

“the entire Summly team is joining the company in the next few weeks and that the app itself will close,” which makes this both an acqui-hire and acquistion.

“The Summly service will be woven into of Yahoo’s mobile experience,” added Yahoo.

 

No idea what Summly is?

Check this out.


Adam Cahan, Yahoo SVP of Mobile and Emerging Products shared on the company’s blog,

Today, we’re excited to share that we’re acquiring Summly, a mobile product company founded with a vision to simplify the way we get information, making it faster, easier and more concise.

At the age of 15, Nick D’Aloisio created the Summly app at his home in London. It started with an insight — that we live in a world of constant information and need new ways to simplify how we find the stories that are important to us, at a glance. Mobile devices are shifting our daily routines, and users have changed not only what, but how much information they consume. Yet most articles and web pages were formatted for browsing with mouse clicks. The ability to skim them on a phone or a tablet can be a real challenge — we want easier ways to identify what’s important to us.

Summly solves this by delivering snapshots of stories, giving you a simple and elegant way to find the news you want, faster than ever before. For publishers, the Summly technology provides a new approach to drive interest in stories and reach a generation of mobile users that want information on the go.

Nick and the Summly team are joining Yahoo! in the coming weeks. While the Summly app will close, you will see the technology come to life throughout Yahoo!’s mobile experiences soon. So stay tuned!

Mobile devices are at the center of how we engage with the people, experiences and interests we love. Across Yahoo!, we’re focused on creating beautiful experiences that people are excited to use every day — products that inspire and delight. We can’t wait to work with Nick and the Summly team to do just that.

(** A quick note from our lawyers: The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in Q2.)


D’Aloisio has also updated the Summly site to reflect the same,


In true Summly fashion, I will keep this short and sweet.

I am delighted to announce Summly has signed an agreement to be acquired by Yahoo!. Our vision is to simplify how we get information and we are thrilled to continue this mission with Yahoo!’s global scale and expertise. After spending some time on campus, I discovered that Yahoo! has an inspirational goal to make people’s daily routines entertaining and meaningful, and mobile will be a central part of that vision. For us, it’s the perfect fit.

When I founded Summly at 15, I would have never imagined being in this position so suddenly. I’d personally like to thank Li Ka-Shing and Horizons Ventures for having the foresight to back a teenager pursuing his dream. Also to our investors, advisors and of course the fantastic team for believing in the potential of Summly. Without you all, this never would have been possible. I’d also like to thank my family, friends and school for supporting me.

Most importantly, thank you to our wonderful users who have helped contribute to us receiving Apple’s Best Apps of 2012 award for Intuitive Touch! We will be removing Summly from the App Store today but expect our summarization technology will soon return to multiple Yahoo! products – see this as a ‘power nap’ so to speak.

With over 90 million summaries read in just a few short months, this is just the beginning for our technology. As we move towards a more refined, liberated and intelligent mobile web, summaries will continue to help navigate through our ever expanding information universe.

Sincerely,

Nick
Founder”

 

Moral of the story..

If you can’t beat them, buy them.

This will without-a-doubt give the execs at Yahoo some leg-room in expanding their mobile vision when it comes to delivering news content to their audience.  With 500,000 users – it’s not a bad start, we’ll see what they can do.

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Kevin is an Online and Mobile Marketing Strategist who has worked with companies of all sizes over the last 6 years. You can follow Kevin on any of the social platforms below.

 
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