Yahoo Acquires Beta Launcher Aviate, Offers 25,000 Beta Spots

Yahoo announced today at the company’s CES press conference that it has acquired Aviate, the contextually-aware launcher replacement for Android devices.

Aviate, which raised a $1.8 million round of funding last year from venture capital firms, has generated a lot of buzz for evoking Google Now in the way it adjusts home screens depending on location and time of day. While at a workplace, for example, Aviate provides shortcuts to apps for business, but at a local attraction, the widgets and icons may change to a check-in service like Foursquare. Such “activities” are customizable, but limited by the types of apps installed; no OpenTable, for instance, means restaurant reservations won’t be displayed. To remedy this and monetize, Aviate intended to offer app recommendations in the future, although it’s unclear if Yahoo has other plans.

How Yahoo intends to leverage Aviate’s technology, the company didn’t elaborate. However, Yahoo is clearly in a celebratory mood, because it’s offering beta spots to 25,000 new users (Use the code “YAHOO” when signing up).

Yahoo Willing To Spend Up To $800M To Aquire Hulu

Just a few days prior we posted an article stating Yahoo! was interested in bidding on Hulu. Reports have said that Yahoo! is willing to pay in upwards of $800 million to acquire Hulu, a video streaming site which is currently owned by Disney, Fox and NBC Universal.

The acquisition of Tumblr was to bring Yahoo a demographic; the company is going through a series of drastic changes at the moment. Yahoo has cut services that aren't bringing in much traffic to the site; Yahoo has also released their own search, mail and weather apps for iOS and Android. These are all moves to bringing in more users and the acquisition of Tumblr and Hulu will help that happen.

Hulu is only as valuable as the content licenses that are signed over with the company; the exclusive content is why Hulu's users pay their monthly subscription fee. Services like Hulu are very popular among the cable cutting portion of society that doesn't want to pay for channels that they won’t watch.

Yahoo Reportedly Places Bid To Buy Hulu

Add one more name to the Hulu bidding war Yahoo!, which just announced plans to buy Tumblr for $1.1 billion, has made an offer on the video website as well.

The Web giant submitted a bid for the video site this morning, according to a person familiar with process. Other people looking to buy all or a piece of Hulu include:

• Directv,
• Time Warner Cable,
• William Morris Endeavor, along with with PE backer Silverlake,
• KKR,
• Guggenheim Digital,
• The Chernin Group

As AllThingsD reported earlier this month, Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer and COO Henrique De Castro have met with Hulu’s team recently for a get-to-know-you; Yahoo! had previously tried to buy a large stake in French video site Daily Motion, but that bid was stymied by the French government. Yahoo! declined to comment.

The question, as it always is with Hulu, is what its owners News Corp., Disney and Comcast are actually willing to sell, and at what price. The three media conglomerates provide the site’s most valuable programming, primarily via shows that have already aired on their broadcast networks. Disney and News Corp. have been at odds about the best way to manage the site for some time; Comcast gave up its management rights as a concession to Federal regulators a few years ago. (News Corp. also owns this website.)

In 2011, Hulu’s owners put the company up for sale and were looking for a bid of at least $2 billion; in exchange, they would offer content licenses that would run for two to three years. But they ended up pulling the site back off the sales block after a few months.

Last month, former News Corp. COO Peter Chernin submitted a starting bid of $500 million, with the understanding that he would be willing to pay more for extended licenses. Bloomberg first reported on the KKR and William Morris Endeavor/Silverlake bids today.

Hulu hasn't had a formal M&A process, but had asked prospective bidders to make an offer by Wednesday. That deadline apparently isn't a firm one, so it’s worth wondering if the field will grow more crowded before this over.

Yahoo announces Flickr Storage Has Been Bumped To 1TB

Yahoo is doing it big today, and during an event in New York they have announced a complete revamp of Flickr. The interface of the website has changed, and now features content blocks and full bleed images instead of the thumbnail or list view of the past. In addition, registered users now have 1TB (as in a terabyte) of free storage space to keep their photos (depending on the photo size is anywhere between 100,000 to 300,000 photos), more than any other online service.

Last December, the Flickr app for iOS received a nice update, and today Yahoo says the Android app will be updated to the same version. That includes a UI change away from the grid we have now to a more content-focused layout resembling the website, as well as better social sharing through Facebook and Tumblr, photo editing and filters via Aviary, and photo-viewing enhancements like zooming and photo details. The update is now live, so if you're a user be sure hit the Google Play and iOS link below to download.

Google Play Store link 

Apple App Store link

Yahoo Rumored To Be In Talks To Buy Tumblr For $1 billion

Yahoo is rumored to be on the verge of shelling out $1 billion for hosting site Tumblr. This could easily be a win-win deal as Yahoo needs the infusion of young blood while Tumblr is looking for liquidity. There is speculation that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has had her eye on the company for a while and has already met with its executives including Tumblr founder and CEO David Karp.

Tumblr has raised $125 million at a valuation of $800 million, so a $1 billion price tag would certainly be in the ballpark, especially since the microblogging site starting adding mobile ads to its mobile app in March. Over the past 6 months, the number of those using Tumblr's mobile app has quadrupled. Tumblr's growth is right now off the charts. The company had $13 million in revenue last year and is expecting as much as $100 million this year.
Yahoo has been shutting down many of its mobile apps and one estimate is that 80% of the company's apps could be gone by the end of the year. But a purchase of Tumblr would add a mobile app that could revitalize Yahoo in the mobile space, where it has yet to make a name for itself.

According to sources close to the situation, the Yahoo board plans to meet Sunday night to decide whether to approve a $1.1 billion all-cash offer for New York-based blogging site Tumblr.

Source: AllThingsD

Yahoo Preparing To Shut Down Services

The 7 products that are set to be discontinued include: Yahoo App Search, Yahoo Sports IQ, Yahoo Clues, Yahoo Message Boards, Yahoo Updates API, Yahoo Avatars, and the Yahoo app for Blackberry. The Blackberry app will continue to be listed in the Blackberry App World until April 1st. Then it will no longer be available for download, and it will no longer receive any support from Yahoo.

Yahoo’s Avatar might be the biggest hit to Yahoo users. Many Yahoo users create their own cartoon-like avatars to use for instant messaging, and for e-mailing. If you check the Yahoo Answers boards, a majority of user icons are their custom avatar icons, which makes me wonder why a service like that isn’t successful. Yahoo says that users who still want to keep their avatars must download their avatar image and manually re-upload it as their profile picture.

Yahoo is following Google’s routine of cleaning out apps that just don’t bring in the kind of engagement and success that the companies want. CEO Marissa Mayer, who is also a former executive from Google, is doing her best in order to turn Yahoo back into the juggernaut it was back in the days. Its shareholders want Yahoo’s stock price to pick back up, and so far they’re pretty happy with the progress that Marissa Mayer has made.



Source: Reuters

Yahoo Moves Away From BlackBerry Smartphones

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is instituting a new company policy called Yahoo! Smart Phones, Smart Fun!” according to an internal memo obtained by Business Insider. Under the new policy, full and part time U.S. employees of Yahoo will be receiving their choice of the iPhone 5, Galaxy S III, HTC One X, EVO 4G LTE or Nokia Lumia 920.

In addition to buying the devices, Yahoo will also be covering the monthly plans for data and voice.

The possible casualty in this fight is that this means Yahoo is moving away from the company supplied BlackBerry devices, and they are not offered amongst the choices. As Mayer states in the memo, “we’d like our employees to have devices similar to our users, so we can think and work as the majority of our users do.” RIM can’t be too happy about such a statement, but considering the declining market share of the BlackBerry line, it makes sense.

No word as to when the new phones will be arriving in employee hands, but seeing as some of the devices have not yet been released, it would appear it will be a staged rollout.

The thought process behind this initiative is:

We have a very exciting update to share with you today – we are announcing Yahoo! Smart Phones, Smart Fun! As of today, Yahoo is moving off of BlackBerries as our corporate phones and on to smartphones in 22 countries. A few weeks ago, we said that we would look into smartphone penetration rates globally and take those rates into account when deciding on corporate phones. Ideally, we’d like our employees to have devices similar to our users, so we can think and work as the majority of our users do.

Moving forward, we’ll offer you a choice of devices as well as provide monthly plans for the data and phone.

The smartphone choices that we are including in the program are:

* Apple iPhone 5

* Android:

- Samsung Galaxy S3

- HTC One X

- HTC EVO 4G LTE

* Windows Phone 8:

- Nokia Lumia 920

We’re getting started right away and taking orders starting now.

450,000 Yahoo Passwords Got Hacked

Security firm TrustedSec has found that more than 450,000 passwords have been exposed after a successful hack into Yahoo’s Voices website, the Guardian reports. Voices, formerly known as Associated Content before being purchased by Yahoo in 2010, is a news and analysis site that relies on user-generated content. The big problem with this particular hack, the Guardian says, is that “the passwords for the accounts were not encrypted meaning that any hacker could scoop up the emails and immediately start using them against other services, including Yahoo Mail.” TrustedSec says the hack was executed using SQL injection attacks that are commonly used to hack into databases.

Facebook Reportedly Acquired 750 Patents From IBM

Facebook on Thursday acquired 750 patents from IBM in an effort to boost the company’s defense and counter new lawsuits, according to Bloomberg. The patents reportedly cover various technologies relating to software and networking. The acquisition would more than double the size of Facebook’s portfolio, which currently includes at least 56 issued patents and 503 filed U.S. patent applications. The patent acquisition comes after Yahoo, a business partner of Facebook, filed a massive patent infringement lawsuit against the social networking site.

Yahoo! Now Rumored to Buy Netflix

Although Munster has a mixed track record, particularly on his usual beat of Apple predictions – he’s been shouting about the Apple television for a couple of years now – the suggestion of potential Netflix interest has had a healthy reaction in the streaming media company’s share price. Stock leapt on Wednesday, by over 11-percent, after Neftlix announced its users had watched more than 2bn hours of content in Q4 2011.

Previous acquisition rumors had pegged Verizon as a potential suitor to Netflix, something the carrier moved to dismiss in December. The streaming firm had struggled in 2011, after an aborted attempt to split away its DVD business as “Qwikster” and price increases drove customers away.

Netflix now intends to invest in its own original content, with the first show premiering next month. That’s arguably something Yahoo! might want to get involved in, making its own portal a destination with content viewers can’t see elsewhere.

Microsoft considers buying Yahoo, signs NDA

Microsoft appears to have renewed interest in buying up the troubled Yahoo. According to the New York Times, a source briefed on the matter says that Microsoft has signed a nondisclosure agreement with Yahoo in order to join private equity firms Silver Lake, TPG Capital, and others in taking a closer look at Yahoo’s books.

The move to acquire Yahoo would help Microsoft secure its existing search and advertising deal with the floundering search pioneer, which currently sells advertising using Bing as its primary search. Microsoft had unsuccessfully attempted to buy Yahoo back in 2008 with a bid of as much as $47.5 billion and last month began talks with other potential partners about another possible bid.

Other interested parties include TPG, which has signed an NDA but is considering making a minority investment rather than buying Yahoo outright. The Alibaba Group, which Yahoo owns 40% stake, has also been in talks about bidding for Yahoo, but has not yet signed an NDA.

Since Yahoo ousted former CEO Carol Bartz in early September, the company’s board has been mulling over its next step. It’s said to be considering several options, including selling the company’s Asian assets, such as its stake in the Alibaba Group, or auctioning off the company entirely instead of hiring a new CEO.