Photo by Leon Brocard/Flickr
Internet giant Yahoo! has acquired personalised recommendation firm Jybe, and with it five former Yahoo! employees. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed.
“As part of this acquisition, we’re welcoming an extremely talented group of engineers and data scientists who will join Yahoo!’s platform organisation, focused on targeting and personalisation,” Jay Rossiter, SVP, Cloud Platform Group, wrote on Yahoo!’s blog.
“This will be a ‘coming home’ for the team – all five are former Yahoos. Arnab Bhattacharjee was the VP of Yahoo! Search Technology (YST), one of the most well-respected engineering and platforms groups in the company. He returns together with former key members of the YST and Hadoop teams – Tim Converse, Christian Kunz, Sameer Paranjpye, and Karthik Krishnamurthy.”
While the Jybe app has closed, Rossiter said Yahoo! is confident Jybe’s data- and science-driven experience will supercharge its efforts to build great products and experiences for Yahoo! users.
In a statement on its website, Jybe said joining Yahoo! is “the perfect match”.
“The Jybe team first set off two years ago to bring mobile users smart, personalised recommendations on food and entertainment. This has been a fun and furious journey for our tiny start-up, as we applied our various technology backgrounds to recommendation and mobile app design,” the statement said.
“We will be closing down the Jybe service, but we are putting together a tool so you can download and keep all your data. We’re eager to start applying everything we’ve learned and built to the Yahoo! platform, so stay tuned. Exciting developments are ahead!”
