[size=14pt]U.K. Teenager Sells App to Yahoo, Becomes Millionaire[/size]

Mar 26, 2013

Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO), the largest U.S. Web portal, is paying about [size=14pt]$30 million to buy Summly[/size], a mobile startup run by a 17-year-old, according to a person familiar with the transaction.

Yahoo announced the deal yesterday on its blog without disclosing terms. [size=14pt]Summly, founded by Nick D’Aloisio at his London home when he was 15 years old[/size], is a mobile application that summarizes news articles for small-screen devices. He’ll join Yahoo along with some members of his team, according to the statement.

Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer is focusing Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo on providing Web services that are customized for individual users, and aims to add engineers by buying small technology startups, she said on a conference call last year. Yahoo has acquired at least six such teams -- including Jybe Inc., Stamped Inc., OntheAir, Snip.it and Alike - - since Mayer took over in July.

“Yahoo in my mind is one of these classic Internet companies and there is so much opportunity now that they have new leadership with Marissa Mayer,” D’Aloisio said in an interview. “There’s a massive opportunity in what they’re doing, which is taking technologies like Summly and allowing them to become used by hundreds of millions of people.”

Sara Gorman, a spokeswoman for Yahoo, declined to comment on the price.

“Most articles and Web pages were formatted for browsing with mouse clicks,” Yahoo said on the blog. “The ability to skim them on a phone or a tablet can be a real challenge. We want easier ways to identify what’s important to us.”
Personal, Mobile

Mayer has said she sees the company building sites and technologies for daily activities such as checking e-mail and stock tickers. In January, she said she’s focused on technology that will personalize content from the Web and deliver it to people on their hand held devices.

“We think about how do we take the Internet and order it for you,” Mayer said.

Yahoo gained less than 1 percent to $23.38 at yesterday’s close in New York, leaving the shares up 17 percent this year. In German trading today, the stock climbed 0.5 percent to the equivalent of $23.49 at 9:32 a.m. in Frankfurt.

D’Aloisio has been building applications for mobile phones since he was 12, creating “gimmicky games” like a program that turned a phone into a treadmill for your fingers, he said in an interview today on Bloomberg Television.

[size=14pt]He made 79 pounds ($120) from sales of his first game, “and that did motivate me a lot,” D’Aloisio said. His parents will keep the money from the Yahoo deal in a trust fund for him, he said[/size], declining to comment on how much he was paid.

“I was very agnostic in terms of talking to these companies,” he said. “I wanted to do what’s right for the technology. Yahoo is going to offer us the scale.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-25/yahoo-buying-summly-to-boost-searches-on-mobile-devices.html

Damn !!! i suddenly feel very silly

lol @ OP's thread title.Food for thought

yup Nigerian teens and young adults are busy arguing from thread to thread, instead of using their time well.

The world is now global, eschew the small thoughts.

We dont need Govt to be successful, if we remain focused, develop/ hone our talent and never give up.

OP, why not post a report on another oyibo boy that acrue enormous debt by playing game on his iphone?

OP the thread title is incomplete...continue arguing over Achebe & Awolowo...

paddy_lo: yup Nigerian teens and young adults are busy arguing from thread to thread, instead of using their time well.

The world is now global, eschew the small thoughts.

We dont need Govt to be successful, if we remain focused, develop/ hone our talent and never give up.

Some young Nigerians are doing their own thing. Google Alexander Amosu, Ladi Delano. How would you even know they are not on Nairaland? Isn't Seun a Nigerian youth?

You should never blame our teens and youth for being non creative and idling away, you blame the adults - political, social and religious leaders, who lay down the warped value system in place today. A value system that that discourages creativity, hard work and excellence and replaces it with making money at all cost and quicky too. That is why our youth are only interested in activities that can bring cash instantly like Yahoo Yahoo and music. Sports takes too much effort and time.

Another problem is that Nigerians are so materialistic that they fail to see the human brain as the greatest resource in the universe, and so intellectual property is not protected. J.K Rawlings became one of the richest woman in britain not because she worked in government or she was allocated oil wells, but because she wrote children's books. A Nigerian based author cannot even feed himself not to talk of becoming rich.

If a young brilliant but unconnected teenager writes an application that is good, most likely it would be stolen by an influencial person or a foreigner and the teen ager would not see a kobo.

Nigerian teens are not idling away at all! how many Nigerian teens are here on NL by the way? those who argue on NL are not teens.
Nigerian teens are doing very great, especially those down south, despite the unfriendly atmosphere in Nigeria, you can not compare the orpportunities that are oppened to a British or an American teen to that of a Nigerian teen. A poor teenager over there can easily acquired a laptop, BB, android or iphone and those gadget are seen as just normal! here if a poor teenager is carrying a laptop or any other high class gadget then he/she may be seen as to belong to one terrible group!
Despite all these Nigerian teens are still building apps, websites etc, please try and check them out in computer village, with very little education!

Cellphones are banned at some private universities. Folks believe that there is a killer call from a certain MTN/Airtel/Glo/Etisalat

adconline: Cellphones are banned at some private universities. Folks believe that there is a killer call from a certain MTN/Airtel/Glo/Etisalat

Surely you jest?

So, to all our lazy nairalanders who keep shouting:
"abeg, I cant read, it is too long" or "Am I mad?
Summaray please!" or "I cant fit read all these thng, make sumbodi summarise am for me". Summly is for you. Buy it and start summarising your life. Kudos to the teen prodigy. If only a smart app developer had done somethng like that for the sake of all those whining NLrs...if only.

paddy_lo:

Surely you jest?

I kid you not man! BTW, pastor Adeboye drives his car without petrol.. powered by miracle