Yahoo! Inc has announced a deal to acquire the shopping website Polyvore. The deal is rumored to be worth $230 Million plus another $40 million to retain key employees. The fashion site, which launched in 2007, is viewed by 20 million unique visitors per month, according to numbers released last year. Likely key to the purchase is Polyvore’s unique social take on shopping. The site features a huge selection of items available through partnerships with other retailers, such as Saks, Bergdorf, Nordstrom. Based off of what items users are “liking,” the site tracks and displays what types of styles are trending. Users can also create “sets.” These “sets” basically serve as looks that can be shared with other users and then be shopped from. The addition of Polyvore will bring a new community of active users into Yahoo’s fold and, perhaps more importantly, advertising relationships with over 350 retailers. While Yahoo tends to favor smaller acquisitions, mainly for talent, the tech company has made a few other large moves before, including the $1.1 billion purchase of Tumblr and $300 million for analytics firm Flurry. Surely, Polyvore’s dedicated user base is a bit nervous about what the acquisition means for them; hopefully there will be few adverse changes.
