Yahoo is acquiring media app Qwiki, in a deal which some sources have said is valued at around $50 million.

  • Yahoo subsequently inked a deal to acquire email management app company Xobni, which is focused on the desktop but also offers a contacts management product for Android and iOS. Xobni has already said that these Smartr Contacts title for Android is no longer available, with its Xobni for BlackBerry also removed – it did not announce plans for its iOS titles.

The media giant said that it will continue to support the Qwiki app, with its team joining Yahoo’s New York office to “reimagine Yahoo’s storytelling experience”.

The iOS app enables users to create videos from content stored on a device, with related images and videos selected from the camera roll, combined with songs from iTunes, and then enhanced with dynamic captions, layouts and pacing.

Qwiki is believed to have raised $10.5 million in funding (this is the last figure it stated publicly), with backing from Lightbank, the investment fund of GroupOn co-founders Brad Keywell and Eric Lefkofsky; Eduardo Saverin, co-founder of Facebook; Jawed Karim, co-founder of YouTube; and Pradeep Sindhu, co-founder of Juniper Networks, among others.

The company started out offering a web version of Qwiki before moving to mobile.

Earlier this year, Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, indicated that the company could benefit from reducing the number of smartphone apps it offers, which has subsequently seen it cutting some of its less popular titles.

However, it has made a number of app acquisitions in recent months in order to bolster its mobile proposition. This has included photography app developer GhostBird Software, news reader Summly, and recommendations title Jybe.

Significantly, many of these acquisitions have seen the original app shuttered, and the technology integrated with other Yahoo products – which at least at the moment is not the intention for Qwiki.