We've been wondering what Yahoo's been up to. Between the tide of departing executives and ho-hum earnings reports, the online portal hasn't been grabbing a whole lot of happy headlines lately. So we're going to help: Yahoo has snapped sexy startup Bix, whose raison d'etre is "social contests." Less than a year old, Bix allows users to create their own "hot or not" contests, complete with audio and video. Karaoke smack-downs appear to be standard fare. Yahoo exec Bradley Horowitz, who was behind the acquisition, describes the service as "absolutely addictive and absolutely compelling." On his own blog, Horowitz elaborates that Bix fits in to the Yahoo grand plan much like its early-stage acquisitions of Flickr, del.icio.us, Upcoming.org, and Jumpcut: "Imagine where Bix's creativity could go once we scale it to over half a billion people worldwide." Bix boss Mike Speiser, onetime founder of Epinions, will join Yahoo as a Vice President in the "Community, Communications, and Front Door" group. No doubt, Horowitz is pleased to have execs coming in the front door, rather than going out.

Deal terms weren't disclosed, but the best take comes from Matt Marshall at VentureBeat. Marshall calls the acquistion another score for a very particular kind of Silicon Valley investor: "It is yet another win for angel investor Amidzad, the rug merchants who own lots of office property in Palo Alto. They invested in Bix when it moved into their property on Florence Street, and saw a nice profit on this investment, we're told."

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