Silicon Valley makes for strange friends and enemies—sometimes, both at the same time. Take the curious case of MessageMe: a one-million-user-strong group messaging application that allows you to send little notes to your friends (or a lot of your friends at once). Well, we should say, allowed.
The app, which also gave users a quick and easy way to send photos, videos, audio recordings, and even little hand-drawn doodles, never quite reached as much popularity as, say, a WhatsApp (600 million users or so) or a Snapchat (more than 100 million monthly users). Yet, the latter company allegedly had quite an interest in WhatsApp. So much so, that it was allegedly being courted by Snapchat for a potential acquisition.
Yet, who ultimately beat Snapchat to the punch? Yahoo—the Silicon Valley search giant, fresh off a fairly big potential payout from Alibaba's recent IPO, is now acquiring MessageMe for a rumored $30 to $40 million.
Making the story stranger still, the news comes shortly following reports that Yahoo is allegedly planning to invest an undisclosed amount of money into Snapchat itself. (Said amount is currently rumored to be around $20 million, but that could certainly change.)
The deal, which hasn't yet closed, will ideally give Yahoo a bit more of a stake in the mobile world, though Snapchat itself has yet to make any revenue from its service. And Yahoo, of course, could find itself accused of going the Tumblr route again—spending a large amount of cash on services that aren't exactly bringing a ton of money back to the company.
As for MessageMe, Yahoo's acquisition (really, an acqui-hire) will officially kill the app for good. It will, however, allow the team to rededicate to other mobile communications projects.
"We built MessageMe to explore our vision of how expressive and fun online communication should be. It's been an incredible journey and we really appreciate all the support we've received from all of you over the last two years. The team at Yahoo shares our passion for connecting people in inspiring ways and we're thrilled about the impact we can make with them," reads a post on MessageMe's website.
"If you have a MessageMe account, you will be able to login and access your messages until November 7, 2014. On November 7, your messages, account, and all personal information will be erased and you will no longer have access to MessageMe."