Yahoo! said that it has acquired Indonesia-based mobile social networking firm Koprol, in a move to extend its social, mobile and local offerings. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Koprol allows users to connect and share photos, reviews and additional information about locations in real-time using just their mobile phone browser. The service enables users to find local businesses and helps them to start or join discussions based on particular locations and invite friends to participate, creating a social mobile community resource.
Yahoo! said that it is focused on providing personally relevant content to its global users on multiple devices and access points. Koprol aggregates a database of locations within a city, created through its community, enabling users to find friends or discover new local businesses, neighbourhood resources and discussions.
In addition, Yahoo! also plans to leverage the community of information generated by Koprol users to make its properties and apps, including its homepage and media and communications products, even more locally relevant.
Yahoo! said that it will continue to invest in Koprol’s service, such as the new BlackBerry application and expects to announce new mobile applications for both local and global mobile platforms in the future.
Rose Tsou, senior vice president for Asia Region at Yahoo!, said: “Users are increasingly relying on mobile devices to communicate and access the internet and they are looking for seamless integration between those devices and PCs. This is especially true in many emerging markets where we are introducing the Yahoo! brand to many new-to-net users.
“Koprol was uniquely designed for mobile phones and within a year has already built a strong user base. Yahoo! provides the global scale and technology to accelerate growth in Indonesia as well as introduce the service to new markets.”
