Yahoo Acquires Social Mobile Tool ‘Alike’

Yahoo has acquired social mobile service Alike.

The deal is part of a talent acquisition that will leave the original Alike program without a supporting staff.

Yahoo and Alike have not revealed specifics about the deal.

Alike was created by a talented founder in former Microsoft and Zillow employee Maria Zhang.

If you are unfamiliar with the tool it providers recommendations about local businesses to users who have visited those locations in the past. Alike also uses historical data to suggest new places to visit.

Yahoo issued the following statement:

“The Alike team created an app that focuses on personalization — using the restaurants and places you like to find the ones you’ll love. We were very impressed by the team and their approach to building personalized experiences.”

Back in In October Zhang told GeekWire:

“We’ve painstakingly collected hundreds of terabytes of data and crafted complex algorithms to really understand the essence of a place. We compare these essences to discover similar places. The great thing about this big data approach is that there is no waiting for a critical mass of 500 of your friends or 10 million other people for the service to be useful.”

Teams from several Yahoo acquisitions will be combined as the company focuses more on mobile. Those acquisitions include the teams from recently acquired Stamped and OnTheAir.