By Josh Beckerman
Yahoo Inc. agreed to buy social shopping site Polyvore Inc., a
move intended to enhance the portal's "Mavens" growth strategy.
Terms of the deal weren't disclosed Friday. Venture-backed
Polyvore--geared toward fashion, beauty and home décor--announced a
$14 million Series C funding round in 2012.
The purchase is expected to help Yahoo's native-advertising
efforts due to Polyvore's relationships with more than 350
retailers.
"Polyvore will strengthen Yahoo's digital magazines and
verticals through the incorporation of community and commerce,"
Yahoo said.
Earlier this year, Yahoo unveiled a new financial metric
tracking revenue in its four key areas of growth: mobile, video,
native and social, or MaVeNS.
The idea was to focus investors' attention on the areas of the
company that are growing, while diverting their focus from its
shrinking desktop display and search ads.
Polyvore co-founder and Chief Executive Jess Lee will join
Yahoo, reporting directly to Simon Khalaf, senior vice president of
product and engineering.
According to a Polyvore blog post, the company "started out in
2007 as the brainchild of 3 ex-Yahoo engineers, Jianing Hu,
Guangwei Yuan and Pasha Sadri." Ms. Lee, a former Google Inc.
product manager, wrote that she "was an early Polyvore user who
wrote in with compliments and complaints, got hired as the first
product manager, and eventually became CEO."
Polyvore has offices in Mountain View, Calif., San Francisco and
New York.
Write to Josh Beckerman at josh.beckerman@wsj.com
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