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According to a Monday report in Bloomberg Businessweek, Square has acquired the "five- to ten-person" engineering team of Yik Yak for $3 million. That leaves just a handful of employees at the Atlanta-based social networking startup. In December 2016, the company already fired 30 of its 50 employees.
Since late last year, Yik Yak has largely gone silent. Its Twitter account hasn't posted since January 4, and its corporate blog has not posted since a month before that. According to Bloomberg, Square has not acquired any other companies since it bought the food delivery startup Caviar in 2014. (Square was founded as a mobile payment company in 2009 by Jack Dorsey, who also founded Twitter.)
Sounds like bad news for Yik Yak, good news for Yik Yak's engineers.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by requerdanos on Thursday April 27 2017, @04:06PM (1 child)
Are... we being bought and sold like slaves now?
Well, in general, yes [endslaverynow.org], but specifically here, no.
Although "Square has acquired the "five- to ten-person" engineering team of Yik Yak for $3 million," it's not the people themselves who have been purchased; rather, it's the business unit employing them. They are free to quit, I'm sure, but their jobs just got a little more secure with the transfer. And while we're on the subject, from TFS...
Sounds like bad news for Yik Yak, good news for Yik Yak's engineers.
Well, sure it's good news for the employees, who now arguably are more likely to face continued employment with paychecks. But why bad for Yik Yak?
Should they have held out for four million?
Why is a dead company receiving three million dollars and no longer having to pay engineering salaries to employees who are producing for them no marketable assets a piece of "bad news?" They are literally being paid millions of dollars for the ability to just *poof* make their payroll liabilities disappear.
On the other hand, yeah, it's probably not a good sign for Yik Yak's potential continued existence as a thing, so there's that.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 27 2017, @06:25PM
Call it end-game, exit strategy, whatever - it sounds like a win where I come from.
🌻🌻 [google.com]