Yahoo! Continues on Spending Spree

After its failure to purchase YouTube, Yahoo! is on a social media spending spree.

by Helen Leggatt

They have now added Bix.com to their portfolio and confirm they have purchased Swedish mobile company, KenetWorks.

Bix.com is a social networking site where users can run online contents, such as karaoke, writing or photography, and rate other users’ talent. Based in Palo Alto, California, Bix.com employs just 16 people. It’s a young company too, having only been running a live service since August this year.

Their user base has reportedly been built up to over a million unique users in just a few months, attracted by prizes of up to $50,000. Targeted advertising is served up with the contests and content is easily uploaded to MySpace.

“This transaction will bring to the Bix community the Web's largest audience - Yahoo! reaches around 500 million users per month on Yahoo!-branded services worldwide (1 out of every 2 internet users),” said Mike Speiser, Bix.com President and CEO, in a message to Bix.com users. “This is huge folks! It means that every performer on Bix will be performing on essentially the world's largest stage with a potential audience in the hundreds of millions.”

The KenetWorks deal will see Yahoo! develop their mobile offerings and furthers their ability to bring people and information together according to an email received by GigaOM.