Yahoo just bought the social shopping startup Polyvore

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Jess Lee

Jess Lee / Polyvore

Polyvore CEO Jess Lee

Yahoo just bought the startup Polyvore, the company announced Friday.

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Polyvore, a social commerce site that lets users make artisitic product collages, was founded by three Yahoo alums.

Jess Lee, the company's CEO and fourth "honorary founder" has actually said before that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has helped shape her career.

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She'll be joining the company and reporting to Simon Khalaf, SVP of product and engineering for publisher products.

Yahoo says it bought Polyvore because of the "amazing potential" of the combination of Yahoo's premium content and the startup's expertise in community-driven experiences and retailer-supported commerce.

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Here's the full blog post:

Polyvore has perhaps the most amazingly engaged digital community of passionate style lovers creating shoppable content anywhere. Which is why I'm so excited to announce today that Yahoo has agreed to acquire Polyvore and the wonderful team who built the business. The combination of Yahoo's exclusive, premium content with Polyvore's expertise on community-driven experiences and retailer-supported commerce has amazing potential.

Polyvore is a leading social shopping site that enables its users across the globe to shop their favorite products, discover new inspiration and express their style. The acquisition will accelerate Yahoo's digital content growth strategy across the areas of social, mobile, and native.

On Polyvore, users put together sets of clothing and accessories that express their love for style and shopping in a compelling, digital, social setting. Polyvore has developed a destination where community-powered content is curated and actionable for shoppers. We believe that bringing this type of community and commerce-driven experience to Yahoo's industry-leading content will transform the user experience across our digital magazines and verticals.

And, when it comes to advertising, Polyvore's technology will bring a proven native ad model, new compelling native ad formats, and strong advertising relationships with more than 350 retailers to Yahoo's fast-growing native advertising platform, Yahoo Gemini.

The co-founder and CEO, Jess Lee, will join my organization and report directly to me following the closing of the transaction. (Fun fact: Jess was a passionate Polyvore community member before she ever became an employee.)

Polyvore has built an award-winning culture, category leading product, and a strong business based on a community of highly engaged users. Following the closing of the transaction, Yahoo will be thrilled to welcome the amazing talent at Polyvore to the Yahoo family in our Sunnyvale, San Francisco and New York offices, and bring their expertise in discoverability and shopability to Yahoo's digital content.

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