Yahoo has purchased content pinning and curation site Snip.it, according to a report at AllThingsD, and is expected to announce the acquisition this week.
Snip.it was founded in late 2011 by Ramy Adeeb, a former partner at Khosla Ventures. Somewhat like a Pinterest for text, it lets users “snip,” save and share articles or excerpts from around the web in a graphical interface. They can also share collections of articles and join groups around topics. As my colleague Katie Fehrenbacher wrote last year, Adeeb “created the site because he wanted to share content about the Arab Spring, but he didn’t want to take the time to write a full blog post or run a website.” Many of the groups on Snip.it are on fairly serious topics that people are passionate about, like foreign affairs and science and the environment — no handbag pictures here.
Snip.it is entirely web-based for now, though mobile apps could follow its acquisition by Yahoo.
AllThingsD reported yesterday that Yahoo’s goal is to become the “Google of content,” citing a source who said Yahoo should be “a destination where people go to find content regardless of where it originates from.” Snip.it obviously helps the company achieve that goal, and allows it to move away from creating its own content and then trying to promote it in a sea of competitors.
The reported acquisition price is somewhere between $ 10 and $ 20 million, which fits with Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s stated goal of making more small acquisitions.
I’ve asked Snip.it and Yahoo for comment. Several Snip.it users have already “snipped” the AllThingsD article about Yahoo’s acquisition of the company, and the article appears as a “featured snip” on the site.
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