Yahoo! Acquires Photo App Maker Cooliris as It Continues to Focus on Improving Mobile
Having a great mobile experience is key in a day and age when a huge chunk of the online experience is had on a smartphone screen, and Yahoo! is continuing its march towards a great mobile experience today by acquiring the photo app maker Cooliris.
Cooliris, in case you’re not familiar, is a company that is best known for apps like Cooliris — which allows users to browse photos from multiple services like Flickr, Dropbox, etc. — and BeamIt — a new photo messaging app.
News of the acquisition broke last night with an official announcement on the Cooliris website, where the team writes (emphasis by Cooliris):
Cooliris is passionate about creating fast, fluid mobile experiences for content and communication – as exemplified by our newest product, BeamIt.
Yahoo has a clear vision and unwavering commitment to making mobile an intuitive and effortless experience.
This makes Yahoo the perfect partner for Cooliris, and we are excited to come together to bring indispensable products to a worldwide audience.
For now, what exactly Yahoo! intends to do with Cooliris is a mystery. The fact that it will have to do with the mobile experience seems a given, as does the fact that it will be related to photos in some way shape or form, but Yahoo!’s official statement to TechCrunch gives nothing away:
In order to build inspiring products, grow engagement, and ultimately revenue, everything starts with having the best people to help us accelerate our transformation in our growth areas. As such, we are focusing on acquisitions that align with our key growth areas: search, communications, digital magazines and video. We are excited to welcome 17 employees from Cooliris to Sunnyvale, where our core communications team is located.
We’ll just have to wait and see what all the Yahoo! imaging acquisitions lead to, but for now, Cooliris and BeamIt users can continue to use the apps. Both Yahoo! and their new acquisition say that nothing will change with the Cooliris products “for the time being”/”in the immediate future.”
