Yahoo’s latest start-up acquisition is Ptch, whose mobile app allows users to combine photos and video into short movies on their handsets, and then share them with the Ptch network as well as Facebook and Twitter timelines.
However, the service will be shut down by January, as Yahoo looks to incorporate its platform and team into its broader, and rapidly evolving, mobile content offering. By contrast, when it recently bought Qwiki, which also has an app for turning photos and videos into short, edited movies, it maintained that service as a standalone service within Yahoo.
“As part of the Yahoo team, we’ll be able to focus our efforts and leverage our technology to make Yahoo’s photo and video platforms the best in the world,” Ptch said in a blog post.
This purchase came a day after Yahoo said it had also snapped up SkyPhrase, a natural language processing start-up. “The team of four has built amazing natural language processing technology and we’re excited to welcome them to our Yahoo Labs team in New York,” said the larger firm.
Yahoo is racking up an impressive list of both advertising and content partners, which is giving the site a whole lot of exclusive (and not exclusive) content. From comedy clips to celebrity interviews to first class news coverage, Yahoo is transforming into a premium online destination site.
Marissa Mayer told investors during her first earnings call as CEO of Yahoo that the company would ‘win mobile without a mobile OS.’ It looks like Mayer is also looking to win online video without creating online video.
Most recently, Yahoo partnered with Vevo to syndicate Vevo’s music video library to Yahoo UK site users. Over 75,000 music videos will become available on Yahoo’s OTT platform, Yahoo Screen, in the UK, along with Vevo’s exclusive concerts and other web programs. Yahoo has similar syndication deals with Vevo for France, Spain, and Italy. In those three markets, Yahoo acts as Vevo’s only advertising sales partner.
Vevo joins a growing list of premium content partners that now adorns the platform’s finance, sports, news and entertainment sites: -Yahoo teamed up with NBC Sports late last year for what they called a ‘content alliance.’ The partnership brought NBC’s sports reporters and bloggers to the Yahoo site, including veterans Bob Costas and Mike Florio. Katie Couric is the latest to join Yahoo’s News team. She will join Yahoo as a ‘global anchor’ sometime next year, though she will keep her TV show on ABC.
Yahoo also recently hired David Pogue of the New York Times, along with Megan Liberman, who is now editor-in-chief of Yahoo News, and national political columnist Matt Bai, who was chief political correspondent for the New York Times Magazine, to round out its top news team. Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, said the move will ‘pioneer a new chapter of digital journalism.’ -In music, the company has indicated it is interested in live streaming music content. Yahoo teamed up with the band the Rolling Stones to stream exclusively around the world the band’s 50th anniversary concert.