Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) Inks Deal to Acquire Polyvore Shopping Site

Yahoo, Polyvore

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) signed a definitive agreement to buy Polyvore, a social shopping site to improve the tech giant’s consumer and advertiser offerings.

The companies did not disclose the terms of the transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions.

Polyvore expected to accelerate Yahoo’s growth strategy

According to Yahoo, acquiring Polyvore would strengthen its digital magazines and verticals by joining e-commerce with social  The combination of Yahoo and Polyvore would fuel native shopping ads, drive sales and traffic to retailers.

Polyvore is expected to accelerate the growth strategy of Yahoo in mobile, video, native and social media. The shopping site has a strong media experience and technology that would bring compelling native ad formats and advertising relationships with more than 350 retailers to Yahoo Gemini, the tech giant’s native advertising platform.

A good building block for Yahoo

In a statement, Simon Khalaf, SVP of Publisher Product at Yahoo said “Polyvore has built an excellent team, a category leading product, and a strong business based on a highly engaged community. The combination of Yahoo’s industry-leading digital content with Polyvore’s expertise in community and commerce has outstanding potential. We are thrilled to have the Polyvore team join us.”

In a separate interview with Bloomberg, Khalaf said the transaction is a good building block for Yahoo. He said, “We feel strongly about the Polyvore community and its success.

On the other hand, Polyvore co-founder and CEO Jess Lee said, “I’m delighted to join Yahoo. Our core mission of empowering people to feel good about their style will remain the same, but with Yahoo’s help we’ll be able to make Polyvore even bigger and better for our user community.”

Lee will be joining Khalaf’s team and will report directly to him following the completion of the acquisition. Polyvore’s other employees will join respective Yahoo’s offices located in Sunnyvale, San Francisco, and New York.

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