Well… this January I’m seeing a lot of closings and endings. Cloud Party has announced it will be closing in February. The announcement is on their blog here: Cloud Party Joins Yahoo.

I am not sure what it means when they say they are joining Yahoo. If Yahoo were buying Cloud Party, we would be reading an acquisition announcement. So, it looks like the talent behind Cloud Party has been hired by Yahoo. What would Yahoo want with virtual world programmers?

A bit of Googling and I find the acquisition announcements and stories. Tech Crunch has this article: Yahoo Acquires Virtual World Gaming Startup Cloud Party, Will Shut It Down. Darrell Etherington, the author of the article, has the take that it will be something to do with gaming. But, he points out this is more likely a talent acquisition than a technology acquisition.

I think the fact that they are providing an exporter for Cloud Party builds suggests they are done with this virtual world.

In May of 2013 Yahoo bought PlayerScale. So, as Darrell points out, the combination of the two at Yahoo might produce something interesting. Or it could just be a talent grab to enhance Yahoo as Microsoft looks at buying Yahoo.