Global internet leader Yahoo Inc confirmed that they bought, Blink, a mobile messaging startup that lets users send messages that self-destruct and control who sees their messages and for how long. Blink will be shutting down its app for both iOS and Android platforms.
Blink also confirmed the news on their official blogsite on Tuesday, May 13, 2014, the terms of the deal and transaction were not disclosed by both Yahoo and Blink.
The 7-person team behind Blink will join Yahoo at its Sunnyvale, California, headquarters and will work on the company’s “smart communications products,” a Yahoo spokesperson told CNET.
The messaging startup Blink lets users send texts, pictures, and audio that self-destruct, the application is very similar to the popular ephemeral messaging app Snapchat, the company co-founded by Filipino American Bobby Murphy.
Yahoo acquired techonology startups since becoming CEO of the company last 2012, they already acquire some 40 young companies. Their latest acquisition of Blink put more engineers into the company’s vision of making Yahoo the leader in mobile technology.
The company is stepping up on their efforts to build online services for the smartphones and tablets that consumers increasingly use to access the web. Yahoo now accounts more than 430 million monthly users of their mobile products. The company’s number of online video streams consumers watched also increased 30% in the fourth quarter.
Mobile messaging is now considered as the fastest growing technology startups for the past few months, earlier reports stated that Snapchat received a $3 billion buyout offer from Facebook Inc but they rejected, Facebook eventually acquired Whatsapp for $19 billion.
Last February 2014, Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten bought Viber, a mobile app enabling free calls and messages for $900 million.
