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Sources: Yahoo Acquires Xoopit

Sources tell Kara Swisher that Yahoo on Thursday will announce the purchase of social email startup Xoopit for around $20 million, one of its first acquisitions in a long time. Xoopit finds photos, video, links and other files in emails, so that users can share them on many sites. It also has other products that are meant to "enliven" email, Swisher says, such as plug-ins that work with Gmail and Yahoo Mail. Xoopit's investors include Accel Partners and Foundation Capital, which, along with several angel investors, have pumped about $6.5 million into the company since 2006.

According to Swisher, Yahoo aims to open Xoopit's popular email product to third-party developers in order to make it more robust. One source says Xoopit is a good fit because it could allow Yahoo's email to be the platform that could tie together other social networking services, like Facebook. Swisher says the acquisition will be formally announced on Thursday at an industry technology conference.

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