Yahoo buys mobile recommendations startup Stamped

Yahoo Inc said on Thursday it bought a small, mobile start-up company in New York, marking one of new Chief Executive Marissa Mayer's first moves to revamp the struggling Web pioneer by acquiring outside products and technology.

Yahoo purchased Stamped, which makes a product that lets consumers share favorite restaurants and music on their smartphones. It did not disclose financial details.

In a blog on the Stamped website, Stamped co-founders wrote that Yahoo would discontinue the Stamped product by the end of the year and that the team would be working on something "big, mobile and new."

"As a team of mostly former Googlers, we've all worked with and are big fans of Marissa. So when an opportunity arose to become a part of the team at Yahoo!, we jumped," read the blog post, which featured a picture of the three co-founders alongside Mayer.

A former Google Inc executive, Mayer took over as Yahoo CEO in July, becoming the latest in a string of executives to try to revive revenue growth at the Web portal.

During Yahoo's quarterly earnings conference call on Monday her first public remarks since taking the helm Mayer said that her top priority was to create a coherent mobile strategy for Yahoo.

Yahoo said the Stamped team consists of nine employees.

The company, with not quite two years of history under its belt, has already won seed funding from celebrities such as pop star Justin Bieber and The New York Times, according to CrunchBase, an online blog and database of venture capital transactions.

Shares of Yahoo were up 7 cents at $16.61 in afternoon trading.

© Thomson Reuters 2012