Snapchat is planning on acquiring a little-known search company
called Vurb for $110 million: 75 percent in stock and 25 percent
cash. Now, suddenly, people all over the tech world who have
never heard of Vurb are trying to figure out why.
What is Vurb? Well, Vurb is a noun that describes a five-year old
company that originally had the bold vision of beating Google at
their own game in the mobile sphere. The search app is actually
pretty ingenious.
Using location data, the app lets you quickly find food, activities,
entertainment, and events near you, then save or share bundled
search results with friends. That way shared content contains
information pulled from the likes of Yelp , Rotten Tomatoes, Google
Maps , and so on.
It’s one of those things that’s intuitive to use but cumbersome to
describe. Perhaps that’s why Vurb never really caught on for
Android or Apple users. The company originally raised $10 million
from investors, but failed to gain traction.
Now Snapchat is buying them out big time, and nobody is really
sure why. The Information postulates that Snapchat might want to
use the company’s search technology to make finding users or
content easier. Right now, Snapchat’s search functions are
rudimentary at best.
Now Snapchat is buying them out big time, and
nobody is really sure why.
However, another possibility is that Snapchat is aiming to
integrate Vurb’s social sharing capabilities with snaps directly,
allowing users to share information – not just experiences – with
their snaps.
We’ll have to wait and see what the transitory social media
platform has planned for Vurb, but for now we can speculate.
What do you think Snapchat has up their sleeve? Let us know in
the comments below!
