Yahoo! in talks for possible Imgur acquistion: Report

Yahoo! has been on a startup acquiring spree lately and the craze refuses to slow down. With Marissa Mayer at the helm, Yahoo! is looking to make more purchases and this time, image hosting website Imgur seems to be on her radar.

According to a report by Business Insider, Yahoo! began to have serious conversation with Imgur, a source has revealed. This rumour follows a report by AllThingsD in October which first spoke about Yahoo’s interest in the image hosting site. Yahoo! had partnered with Imgur to make the latter a partner on hosting earlier this year. Now, Yahoo! may consider buying the company altogether. Business Insider estimates that the company could be sold off to Yahoo! for a sum ranging between $100 million and $500 million.

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Imgur could well turn out to be not just a good purchase for Yahoo! but also a tough deal to crack. Despite the fact that Yahoo! has made some major and minor purchases this year, Imgur’s towering presence of 100 million unique visitors a month and growing will make it a hard deal.

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Set up in 2009 by Alan Schaaf, an Ohio University student, Imgur was meant as a gift to Reddit. Schaaf was reportedly tired of other photo-sharing websites that made the sharing process too tedious. Eventually, Reddit’s sister site, Imgur, went on to overtake its mark of 85 million users to become the bigger site.

Imgur has no venture capital and sees only 10 employees in its San Francisco office. The money the site makes is off memberships and ads as well as some sponsored images. It has also sold image hosting capacities to other companies including Yahoo!