Yahoo, rich on its recent cash win from Alibaba IPO, is reportedly in talks to acquire leading local search and discovery service provider, FourSquare, TechCrunch reported. As per the source, the deal “is done” but the final details are being worked out.
Rumors related to the deal suggests that the deal could be worth of $900 million. However, the same report mentions that some of their sources in Yahoo have no information about the deal, which could mean that this is just a speculation or the deal is happening within a circle of selected people.
This is not the first time that the story related to Foursquare’s acquisition by Yahoo has come up. Earlier, in 2010, Foursquare was in talks with Yahoo to sell its business for around $100 million.
Till now, Foursquare has raised $162.4 million in 6 funding rounds from 18 investors, including Microsoft. It was founded in 2009 by Naveen Selvadurai and Dennis Crowley. Earlier, it turned down a $100—150 million acquisition offer from Facebook.
Recently, the company splitted its app into two – Foursquare and Swarm. While Foursquare remains solely for exploration and discovery, Swarm is a check-in app which helps users find friends nearby. Since the split, Foursquare has been among the top 25 travel apps in US App Store, though Swarm has been on a decline and is ranked at 146 in social media apps.
Foursquare and Yahoo could makes sense. Ever since Marissa Mayer took over as CEO of Yahoo, she is trying to make Yahoo a mobile company. Foursquare’s location data is also an important asset. The company claims that here have been 7 billion check-ins, 70 million tips, 55 million people, 65 million places and 90 million “tastes” logged through its apps.
Also, Foursquare’s location API is in use by 85,000 developers of other apps which would give Yahoo a major connection with developers and publishers.
Marissa Mayer has acquired 46 companies during her tenure, including the big $1.1 Billion acquisition of blogging platform Tumblr. The acquisition of Foursquare would be a bold move for the company which is trying hard to rebuild its search product.
