Yahoo has had a busy day. Not only did they announce a new cross-branding deal with Nokia, and struck a partnership with Match.com, and had their CEO spar onstage with Mike, but they apparently made an acquisition too. It’s a location-based service. No, not that one. It’s called Koprol. Basically, it’s the Asian Foursquare.
Koprol, based in Jakarta, Indonesia focuses on the “intersection of location, community expertise and mobile experiences.” With it, people share photos and reviews of locations using their mobile phones. And yes, it allows you to “check-in” to a location.
This acquisition is interesting to say the least since Yahoo had been in discussions to buy Foursquare, the American Koprol. That purchase (which we urged Foursquare not to agree to) would have likely cost Yahoo north of $100 million. The terms of this deal were not disclosed, but you can be sure Yahoo got Koprol for far less than that.
On the surface, this purchase seems to make sense with Yahoo’s apparent direction. With the Nokia deal in place, they seem to be going after emerging markets, such as Indonesia. And it’s a web app, so a smartphone isn’t needed. From the site:
You don’t need a fancy smartphone or GPS to use Koprol. Just open koprol.com in your phone browser, check in, and Koprol will tell you what’s happening nearby.
That said, Koprol has apparently been extending beyond feature phones, as it today introduced a BlackBerry application.
No word on if Koprol was welcomed to the Yahoo team by Bartz with a nice “pergi dr sini!“
[via Hunter Walk]
