14 DAY TRIAL // Yahoo has announced today that it has acquired social email startup Xoopit, this way confirming earlier reports in this regard. The announcement came from Bryan Lamkin, senior vice president of Yahoo Applications, and was also confirmed in a blog post on Xoopit's homepage. There were no comments on the price of the transaction but sources said Yahoo bought Xoopit for about $20 million, somewhat of a bargain for the Internet giant, which has been reluctant to make new acquisitions lately.
“Xoopit will bring phenomenal photo organization, improved photo sharing, and the serendipity of discovering forgotten photos to Yahoo! Mail,” Bryan Lamkin, SVP, Yahoo Applications, said. “Why is this such a big deal? Yahoo! Mail is actually home to one of the largest online photo repositories in the world. And every day, millions of you use Yahoo! Mail as your primary way to share the photos of important moments in your lives. While social networks and community sites are great for sharing photos with everyone you know, we realize it’s not for everyone or every occasion.”
Xoopit's most famous product is a Gmail plugin that enhances the email service with photo management and organization tools. A similar product was introduced to Yahoo Mail late last year as an official optional application. The app indexes all of the photos users may have sent in attachments but also all of those they received from friends or colleagues and then allows them to search and view them in one place. Actually, the fact that Xoopit was the third most popular application in Yahoo Mail, according to Yahoo itself, was probably one of the reasons the company decided to buy the startup.
Xoopit has been privately owned up to this point and has been funded with about $6.5 million mostly from Accel Partners and Foundation Capital but also several angel investors. Apparently, Yahoo tried to buy Xoopit in the past, offering $10 million, but was turned down. The latest offer was more appealing though and Xoopit founders are pleased with the deal.
“The Xoopit team today sees this acquisition as an exceptional path for us in achieving our vision. Over the last few months, we have left every conversation with the Yahoo! team thinking that together we can wow the world. We now get to unleash our ideas on the future of email to a huge global user base,” founders Bijan Marashi and Jonathan Katzman wrote.