Yahoo Buys Rockmelt Social Browser And Shuts Down App

Yahoo’s summer shopping spree has claimed another company. This time it’s former social browser turned Flipboard clone, Rockmelt. According to Rockmelt, its products will be completely shut down at the end of this month. Current users will be able to export their existing content as an OPML file. Reports indicate that the Internet giant shelled out between $60 and $70 million (€45 and €52 million) for the company. Rockmelt’s team will head for the Yahoo mobile and media departments. “The parallels between Yahoo! And Rockmelt are obvious: we share a common goal to help people discover the best personalized content from around the web,” Yahoo’s Mike Kerns and Adam Cahan said in a blog post. Rockmelt has a well-regarded team that was surely attractive to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer as she continues to build out her team. But the acquisition was not a pure acqui-hire, as Rockmelt had built a variety of media-related mobile technologies that could be useful to Yahoo. Yahoo posted the following : Thirty-two Rockmelt employees have joined our media and mobile organization. We aren’t going to discuss specifics on what they’re working on, but we plan to integrate the Rockmelt technology into our media platform in order to deliver content in new and exciting ways. Stay tuned!