Internet giant Yahoo has inked a deal to acquire Indonesian mobile social network operator Koprol in a bid to boost its own community-driven, location-based social offerings. Based in Jakarta, Koprol is designed to work with any mobile device that supports a browser, enabling users to find and locate friends, get to popular businesses and events based on their phone’s location, upload phones, and more. Users “check in” with Koprol to see where other users are and what they’re up to.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“Users are increasingly relying on mobile devices to communicate and access the Internet and they are looking for seamless integration between those devices and PCs. This is especially true in many emerging markets where we are introducing the Yahoo brand to many new-to-Net users,” said Yahoo’s Asia region senior VP Rose Tsou, in a statement. “Koprol was uniquely designed for mobile phones and within a year has already built a strong user base.”
Yahoo says it plans to continue evolving Koprol’s service—including a new BlackBerry app that just launched today—as well as leverage the service’s community-based technology to spiff up other communications products.
The move marks Yahoo’s second major mobile deal in as many days; yesterday the company announced Nokia will be handling its mapping and navigation services, whlie Yahoo will handle email and chat messaging for Nokia’s Ovi service.
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