Yahoo snaps up photo-sharing firm Xoopit

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 23 Jul 2009 at 09:05

Yahoo has acquired Xoopit, a service which allows people to share photos from their inbox with social-networking sites.

Xoopit hunts through your inbox for sent and received photos, offering a range of options for organising and redistributing them. It began life as a Firefox add-on for Gmail.

Yahoo didn't disclose how much it had paid for the start-up, but reports peg the figure at around $20 million. The company has confirmed it's working on integrating the technology into Yahoo Mail and that it will continue to be available for Gmail for the time being.

"For you Gmail+Xoopit users out there who've been waiting for an excuse to switch to Yahoo, here's your chance," says Yahoo senior vice president Bryan Lamkin on a blog post. "But, in the meantime, we will still be providing support for your Xoopit Firefox Add-on."

He goes on to elaborate on why he thinks we should all be very excited about the acquisition.

"Yahoo Mail is actually home to one of the largest online photo repositories in the world. And every day, millions of you use Yahoo Mail as your primary way to share the photos of important moments in your lives," he says.

"Xoopit will bring phenomenal photo organisation, improved photo sharing, and the serendipity of discovering forgotten photos to Yahoo Mail," he continues.