A few days ago rumors that Yahoo is eyeballing buying NY travel startup MileWise surfaced. Founded back in 2010, MileWise is basically a deal aggregator-organizer for Android and iOS apps. Basically a loyalty point calculator, MileWise shows promise in helping users sort out the myriad offers and points of the travel world.
Some say the loyalty business is worth up to $50 billion for consumers these days, and apparently Yahoo would like a piece of that pie. Buying MileWise, a startup backed by a herd of angels and some $1.5 million so far, would accomplish some key goals for Yahoo. For one, getting Yahoo users more involved actually outweighs the pure monetization of such a tool as MileWise. In essence, the only reason Yahoo is still in business is because of an interactive and loyal user base anyhow. So, snapping up tools like MileWise can only help matter for Marissa Mayer’s still floating Internet company.
About the only thing propping up Yahoo these days, user engagement elements are actually a perfect strategy to take the once beleaguered remnant of the dot com era places today. Here it should be noted that Yahoo! stocks (below) have continued to rise since Mayer took over. If you Google Yahoo, you inevitably find a dozen or more results aiming to Yahoo Sports pages. This is not a bad thing for Mayer’s company, but it certainly indicates a sort of “all the eggs in one basket” approach to Internet value.
Of course there’s a lot more to Yahoo than some sports and other news, but apparently Mayer has her mind set on adding new eggs to the Yahoo presence basket now. Oh, Yahoo did recently buy the rights to the archives of Saturday Night Live. Comedy video is engaging too, no?
For travelers, Yahoo! MileWise may just help you save some big bucks.