Yahoo Acquires Vizify, Terms Not Disclosed

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Founded in 2011 by Jeff Cutler-Stamm, Eli Tucker, and Todd Silverstein, Vizify, a service that let users create visual bios out of their social media data (you can check out one of the founder’s bios to get a better idea), is Yahoo’s latest acquisition (h/t @TomRotunno).

“Since last summer, we’ve been engaged in a conversation with some of the incredible folks at Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) about the ways this more visual approach to data can inspire and entertain,” the company’s founders wrote in an announcement.  “As our conversations progressed, we realized we’d found a partner who shared our passion for user experience, design, and visualizing information. Ultimately, we just couldn’t say no to the opportunity to bring our vision to the hundreds of millions of people who use Yahoo every day.”

Vizify is closing its service, refunding customers

It looks like Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) is most interested in the team that Vizify has assembled because it will close down the service over the next year. To Vizify’s credit, they aren’t leaving their customers high and dry. All current users can opt-in to having their page archived and kept available until September 4 of this year; users who had their Vizify bio on a custom domain name will have ownership of the URL transferred to them without charge, and (most impressively) paying users are being refunded all of the money they’ve sent to Vizify.

The terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed, but if Vizify is willing to simply hand back all of the money it’s earned over the last few years, they must have been fairly generous. Registered users can expect to get an email from Vizify explaining everything. For the rest of us, this is probably the first and last time we’ll hear about the company.

Yahoo’s last acquisition was $80 million purchase of Aviate

This continues the pattern of growth through acquisition that Yahoo has followed since Marissa Mayer became CEO a few years back. The most recent major acquisition, tech startup Aviate, was announced by Mayer at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. Since this new deal is first showing up on Vizify’s web site, we can probably assume that it is smaller than the $80 million Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) reportedly paid for Aviate, but at least an approximate figure will probably come out at some point.

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) acquired 24 companies in 2013, including Tumblr for $1.1 billion, and even if it doesn’t hit that high mark it hasn’t slowed much so far this year.

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