Yahoo has bought movie making app Qwiki as the internet giant continues its expansion into the mobile market. Watch this video from Qwiki promoting the new deal here: The move marks another mobile acquisition for CEO Marissa Mayer as the firm looks to target the smartphone and tablet market. Qwiki is a free iPhone app […]
Yahoo has bought movie making app Qwiki as the internet giant continues its expansion into the mobile market.
Watch this video from Qwiki promoting the new deal here:
The move marks another mobile acquisition for CEO Marissa Mayer as the firm looks to target the smartphone and tablet market.
Qwiki is a free iPhone app that lets users create short slideshow movies using images, videos and music already on a device.
The movies can be created with a little input or with a single tap before being shared via Twitter and Facebook, or privately by email. Its creators call it “one-tap storytelling.”
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but newspaper reports put the purchase figure at around $50 million.
Yahoo said Qwiki will continue to operate as a standalone company.
“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,” Mayer’s company said in a blog post announcing the news.
Qwiki confirmed the news on its blog. “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,” the company said.
Qwiki started out as a multimedia search engine application but relaunched in its current form earlier this year, clocking up 125,000 downloads in its first six days in the iOS store.
Yahoo expansion
Meyer took the helm in July 2012 and has been snapping up firms as part of her plan to revive Yahoo.
Since her arrival Yahoo has bought various firms including start ups such as Alike, Stamped, Snip.it and a Summly application built by a teenager in the UK.
In May, it redesigned its photo-sharing service, Flickr, offering users up to 1TB of storage without a fee.
It said the revamp would also allow users to host longer video clips and higher-resolution photos.
Read the official Yahoo announcement here
Read the Qwiki announcement here
