Hot or not? Yahoo's buyout of 'social contest' site Bix
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."

Okay, The Browser's ready: Start sending the "bubble warning" comments....
Posted by Oliver Ryan 11:23 AM 1 Comments comment | Add a Comment

FYI, I just completed an interview with Bix CEO, Mark:
http://www.centernetworks.com/interview-with-bix
Posted By Allen, Atlanta Georgia : 6:50 PM  

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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.