The head of social shopping site Polyvore announced the pending sale of her company to Yahoo. Described as a way to “discover and shop for things you love in fashion, beauty and home decor,” the site was founded in 2007 by ex-Yahoo engineers.
In a blog post addressing users, cofounder and CEO Jess Lee said the site would still be the same Polyvore they loved, but with additional resources. “Our mission of empowering people to feel good about their style will stay the same. We’ll continue to add cool new product features and roll out new perks for top members. We’ve accomplished a lot on our own, but together with Yahoo we can take Polyvore to its fullest potential.”
And while the deal is clearly a positive sign for “social shopping,” it’s still not certain social sites can monetize through ecommerce alone – in this case, Yahoo will roll out the Polyvore advertising platform across its entire network by integrating with Yahoo Gemini, Lee told TechCrunch.
In fact, Yahoo itself is jettisoning its ecommerce business Yahoo Stores with plans to divest itself of its Yahoo Small Business, the unit that oversees the ecommerce website-hosting platform. See more on that in today’s Newsflash.
Polyvore boasts that it drives sales to retailers, including to Etsy, eBay, and Amazon marketplaces. Citing Rich Relevance data, it states: “Our average basket size across retail partners is over $383, which is higher than other leading social networks combined.”
