Yahoo acquires location-based community Koprol

Yahoo announced its acquisition of location-based community services provider Koprol, a move promising to extend the digital solutions giant's mobile, social and local efforts. Financial terms were not disclosed. Headquartered in Jakarta, Indonesia, Koprol rivals location-specific check-in services like Foursquare and Gowalla, but forgoes the application download model in favor of a mobile browser-based approach that extends the service to a larger percentage of subscribers. Koprol aggregates a database of locations within a city, created through its community--users can check in at their current location and identify their contacts' whereabouts and activities, as well as share photos, reviews and additional information about locations in real time, including a "thumbs-up" feature designed to lift favorite sites to the top of overall rankings.

Yahoo said it plans to leverage the Koprol community to make its properties and applications more locally relevant. Beyond a new BlackBerry application introduced today, Yahoo expects to roll out new Koprol apps for both local and global mobile platforms in the months ahead.

For more on the Yahoo/Koprol deal:
- read this release

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