Oh, the places you’ll go—and oh, the places Zofari is going! Local recommendation app Zofari has been purchased by Yahoo in a quiet acquisition last week; the deal was announced without much fanfare, and financial terms have not yet been disclosed. The buyover is another move by Yahoo to put mobile services at the front of their endeavors.
Zofari uses natural language processing, machine learning, and third-party data from sites such as Foursquare to match users up to places they may enjoy visiting in their area. For users, then, the experience can feel random but is actually carefully calculated. The app has been described as a “Pandora for places,” comparing it to the algorithm-based music service in the ways in which it anticipates users’ preference.
While effective conceptually, an app of Zofari’s size would struggle as a standalone entity. It currently only boasts four employees, and with companies like Foursquare, Groupon and Amazon making moves into the social/mobile/local commerce game, Zofari’s small size might prove a hindrance to its success. However, Yahoo’s buyover will hopefully allow it to expand and impact more users. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has acquired over 30 mobile-related companies in the past year alone, and is clearly making mobile a serious focus at Yahoo while she heads up the company.
In a recent blog post, the four Zofari employees expressed their excitement to join Yahoo: “After meeting some of the amazing folks on the Yahoo Search team and hearing about their vision, the decision for our team to join Yahoo was an easy one,” the note says. “We can’t talk about what we’re working on yet but needless to say we are very, very excited. While we’ve built an experience we couldn’t be more proud of, we’re a small company and have always dreamed of reaching users at a greater scale.”
The places you’ll go are expanding like never before, and with this new acquisition you never know where you’ll end up.
Edited by
Maurice Nagle 
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