No sooner had Yahoo's collective credit card cooled down from its last purchase—the recent acquisition of app maker Tomfoolery back in the closing days of January—than reports emerged of another major purchase for the company. This time it picked up a start-up going by the name of Wander, an app that offers up a “social diary” experience and gives Yahoo another noteworthy piece to add to a growing arsenal of services.
Wander was originally intended to serve as kind of a travel diary of sorts, but quickly made one small adaptation and focused on an app that came to be called “Days.” Days is essentially the same as Wander's original focus of travel, but came to realize that anything could really be travel. Thus, instead of providing little snippets of a particular day, Days allowed users to offer up the story of how a day in particular went.
Yahoo has reportedly landed Wander for over $10 million, though that's not confirmed, but still good considering Wander had raised just $1.2 million itself. The overall plan is to keep Days a standalone app, which the entire Wander team of five will be working on. Beyond that, though, there are also “some exciting new projects” in the works when the group starts working with Yahoo's Mobile and Emerging Projects team.
Some might question the point of picking up what amounts to a diary app, but given Yahoo's previous acquisitions it does make some sense. It's been pretty clear for a while now that Yahoo's been in the market to take mobile by storm. That's a bit broad, but it's also clear: not only does Yahoo want mobile, Yahoo wants mobile services to back it up. From Aviate, the intelligent homescreen maker, to the deep linking capability offered by Sparq to Hitpost's content services and beyond, Yahoo not only wants to be mobile from the look of it, but Yahoo also wants to give users plenty to do on the mobile platform as well.
This isn't so outlandish, really. Yahoo's currently enjoying a high position when it comes to the desktop Web, but the world is no longer about just the desktop Web. The growth of mobile devices, the growth of uses for mobile devices...these things make mobile a growth field, and one that has to be at least brought into play in order to make the overall picture work. Yahoo wants to be as big on mobile as it is on desktops, and though that will be a tough order to fill, so to speak, it's going to be one that Yahoo pursues with all the aggressiveness it can.
Only time will tell, naturally, if Yahoo can realize what looks like dreams of mobile dominance. But with a growing portfolio of services, as well as some big potential shake-ups in control and overall user experience, Yahoo certainly has plenty on its side to make it a force to be reckoned with both now and in the future as well.
Edited by
Stefania Viscusi
