The San Francisco-based startup was established in 2011 by Ramy Adeeb, previously an investor at Khosla Ventures, created a fabulous web application for clipping news articles and organizing them in a visually compelling Pinterest-like format.
According to TechCrunch reporting, the deal, which is being considered to have been underwraps for several weeks now, was first discovered this morning by AllThingsD’s Liz Gannes and subsequently confirmed by both Yahoo and Snip.it this afternoon.
Snip.it announced its acquisition by Yahoo on its website Tuesday. (Snip.it / January 22, 2013)
Moreover, Yahoo is paying “mid teens” of millions of dollars for the content discovery site and will disclose the deal this week, according to AllThingsD, which cited sources familiar with the deal.
In addition, the digital scrapbooking site caters to subject-matter experts who want to add their own commentary to content “snips” and establish themselves as curators in areas such as tech, philosophy, and mobile.
The Snip.it Team: Jouhan Allende, Will Dalton, Jen Pollock, Francesco Carli, Marc Nijdam, Ramy Adeeb, Mark Percival, Alaina Percival, Cedric Han, and Sarah Caplener.
In a 2012 interview, Adeeb, an Egyptian native, told Reuters he envisaged his start-up idea during the recent Egyptian revolution, when he wanted to share articles about Middle East politics but found Twitter to be inadequate because most of his interactions with his Twitter followers were related only to tech in Silicon Valley.
Furthermore, the startup, which first opened to the public in November 2011, refreshed its Web site with an emphasis on discovery in June of 2012. The overall experience is attractive, but the site’s traction is likely pretty minimal. One year ago, Snip.it had 7,000 users, 40 percent of whom were active, Adeeb said at the time.
In order to sustain development, Snip.it raised an undisclosed sum in funding from Khosla Ventures, True Ventures, Charles River Ventures, and SV Angel. A $15 million exit would likely be a small but favorable outcome for the young company.
Nevertheless, of late, Yahoo is showing some good signs of its re-emergence, and this acquisition is Yahoo’s third M&A deal under CEO Marissa Mayer’s leadership, and the first in her tenure not centered on mobile. With Mayer at the helm, Yahoo previously picked up recommendations app Stamped in October and video-chat startup OnTheAir in December.
Terms of the deal, which was first reported by tech blog AllThingsD, were not disclosed. In a statement posted to its website, Snip.it said it was shuttering its service, effective immediately.
“We are thrilled at the opportunity to bring Snip.it’s vision to a larger scale at Yahoo!,” says the Snip.it website. “While we cannot share the specifics of what we will be building, we are excited about the opportunity to take social news to new, exciting heights at Yahoo!. The Yahoo! team is passionate about inspiring and entertaining the world’s daily habits, and certainly sharing news and information is something we all do every day. The vision and energy at the company is contagious, and we’re so excited to be part of all that is to come.”