Update: According to All Things D ,the price was $30 million in cash (90 percent in cash and 10 percent in stock). Kara Swisher says several sources confirmed this.
Yahoo announced on Monday that it is acquiring mobile product company Summly, which has an app (or had, at least) billed as “pocket sized news for iPhone”.
Summly Founder Nick D’Aloisio and his team will join Yahoo in the coming weeks, and the Summly app will close. Yahoo is acquiring the technology, and will use it in its own mobile experiences soon, a Yahoo spokesperson tells WebProNews.
Here’s a look at Summly:
Summly Launch from Summly on Vimeo.
Yahoo SVP, Mobile and Emerging Products, Adam Cahan, writes in a blog post:
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.
“Our vision is to simplify how we get information and we are thrilled to continue this mission with Yahoo!’s global scale and expertise,” says D’Aloisio. “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.”
“With over 90 million summaries read in just a few short months, this is just the beginning for our technology,” he says. “As we move towards a more refined, liberated and intelligent mobile web, summaries will continue to help navigate through our ever expanding information universe.”
The acquisition is expected to close in the second quarter. Terms of the deal are not being disclosed.
