‘Snapchat’ Pays $200M To Acquire Mobile Search Startup ‘Vurb’

“Snapchat” is expanding its offerings by acquiring the 5-year old startup called “Vurb” for nearly $200 million. The startup brands itself as an expedient way to offer information to users that are backed by the community, thus allowing them to determine such things as which restaurant, café, and social hangouts are perfect for their needs.

According to The Information, “Snapchat” is paying as much as $110 million for “Vurb” itself and is throwing in as much as $75 million in retention bonuses. The bonus will supposedly go towards keeping many of the employees already working for “Vurb” around, but the majority is likely to go to “Vurb” founder and CEO Bobby Lo. With regards to the payout, the $110 million will come in 25% percent cash and 75% in stocks.

Business Insider confirmed the same reports via its own sources, writing that the acquisition is final. With this being the case, “Snapchat” can become more than just the media-sharing social site with photos and videos disappearing after 24 hours and offering oddly popular filters. This would allow it to expand and remain competitive in an industry that is fast becoming all-encompassing.

As Tech Crunch points out, however, this might not even turn out to be beneficial to “Snapchat.” During its five years of existence, “Vurb” has struggled to become relevant, even with the backing of such brands as “Redpoint Ventures” and even the CEO of Dropbox, Drew Houston. The fact that it is selling to “Snapchat” could have less to do with “Vurb’s” potential as a future source of revenue and more to do with the startup taking the first chance it has at making actual money.

Then again, the startup did win the Startup Battlefield, which was held during Disrupt NY 2014 and organized by TechCrunch thanks to its more results-oriented approach at browsing. Instead of endless search pages, users get the best result based on community feedback.