Did you hear the news? Yahoo acquired Summly.
Am I surprised? Kind of. I thought Summly would last a while before getting scooped up. But I realize I don’t understand all the reasons for things like this since I’m not in their shoes.
I was super impressed with Summly when I first heard of them. So much so that I applied for an internship there (no dice), downloaded the app, and sent out a few tweets of praise. I used the app for a while, but after a few weeks I lost interest and didn’t use it anymore. Its a cool app and cool service, but not something I’d use every day.
From a marketing perspective, their website and particularly their video were quite awesome in my opinion. Well done Summly, well done.
A few random thoughts:
- Yahoo wouldn’t be my company of choice to be acquired by – especially since more than likely I’d have to work with the acquiring company for several months to a few years. Ever since the day of Yahoo spam mail (both physical and those annoying disks) and I’ve never been a fan of their homepage or ball and chain services. Sounds like Yahoo is going in a new direction lately, so its probably much better than I’d expect.
- I know Yahoo technically has an exclamation point at the end, but I choose not to include it. Reminds me of this one guy who changed his name to “Meta World Peace”. Sure, I should probably add the exclamation point in there to be official, but what if they called their company: “Yahoo, We Rule Everyone in the Entire Planet, Including You, Yes You”. – – – I’d choose to just call them Yahoo.
- Nick D’Aloisio, the founder and creator of Summly, created the app when he was 15. What have I been doing for the past 13 years!? Holy cow. I need to step up my game BIG time.
(You can read the Techcrunch article here:
Yahoo! Continues To Attack Mobile, Buys News Gathering And Delivery Startup Summly, App Will Close)
