Yahoo keeps the tab open, buys email organizing app Xobni

Xobni is the third acquisition from Yahoo in as many days

President and CEO of Yahoo!, Marissa Mayer (Getty Images)

In its third acquisition in as many days Yahoo has bought the makers of an email and contact management software suite. The tech-giant on the make reportedly paid between $30 and $40 million for Xobni (pronounced ‘zah-bnee’, the word is ‘inbox’ spelt backwards).

Xobni was started back in 2006 in an MIT dorm room. It received initial seed funding from YCombinator and released its range of organizational Smartr products for mobiles in 2011.

On the blog on their website Xobni promised users that “if you’re using a Xobni product today, you can keep using it” before saying that “soon you’ll be able to use Yahoo! Products with Xobni goodness baked right in.”

The posting was brimming with good feelings for their new parent company: “Did you ever meet someone who truly “gets" you?  That’s how we feel about Yahoo!”

“The power within every Xobni product is that it responds to how you communicate.  Every day you demonstrate who and what is important to you.  That can benefit not just your inbox or smartphone, but the many services you use.  Yahoo! gets that, and they want us to use our platform to make many Yahoo! services better for you.”

The acquisition is the latest in a string of purchases for Yahoo. Yesterday it announced the purchase of Qwiki, makers of a mobile app that creates on the fly slideshows from the pictures and music on an individual’s phone, for $50 million.

Earlier that day it had also bought Bignoggins productions – a one-man company that makes apps to help people keep track of their fantasy sports teams.

Taken as a group, these acquisitions show Yahoo’s clear desire to move into mobile territory, an area ripe for future expansion.

In a presentation at the D11 conference by industry analyst Mary Meeker it was shown how mobile access as a percentage of global internet traffic has grown from 0.9% in 2009 to 15% at the beginning of 2013.These figures are not expected to slow, especially considering the boost from tablet sales, and Yahoo are obviously hoping to move ahead of their rivals.