Yahoo purchases iPhone video app Qwiki for close to $50 million

Just as rumours hinted last month, Yahoo has announced that it has acquired Qwiki. The New York-based startup and Yahoo both announced the sale in their blog posts.

The iPhone app that allows users to create short videos using pictures, music and video reportedly caught Yahoo’s fancy recently with All Things D reporting last month that the Internet giant may be toying with the idea of purchasing it for about $50 million. While the companies have not disclosed the terms or value of the deal, ATD says it’s somewhere in the range of $40 million to $50 million.

Sold!

CEO and co-founder Doug Imbruce wrote in the blog post that Qwiki will exist as a standalone entity inside the Yahoo offices in New York. The company has raised over $10 million from multiple investors including Lightbank, Lerer Ventures and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin.

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Qwiki will be joining a host of other services acquired by Yahoo recently. This year alone, the company has acquired blogging giant Tumblr for $1.1 billion in cash. The company soon moved its official blog to yahoo.tumblr.com as its first act of commitment to the blogging platform.

It was also announced yesterday that Yahoo had acquired fantasy sports start-up Bignoggins for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition was made by the Internet giant to strengthen its Yahoo Fantasy Sports product. It will be taking on the lone employee of the company, founder Jerry Shen, to work on Yahoo Fantasy Sports. He will be using the technology behind his apps like Fantasy Monster and Draft Monster for strengthening Yahoo’s services.