Not that long ago, Yahoo was working overtime to keep itself from being sold. These days, Yahoo seems to fancy itself a potential buyer instead.

Yahoo signaled its deal-making aspirations at a conference on Wednesday, where its chief technology officer, Ari Balogh, appeared over a video link. Mr. Balogh, who is also Yahoo’s executive vice president for products, said that lower valuations made it a good time to be shopping for add-ons.

“I can guarantee you there will be some acquisitions, and we will do some stuff in-house,” he said, according to Reuters, which hosted the conference.

While others continue to focus on the fate of Yahoo’s search business — chatter about some kind of search deal with Microsoft never seems to die — Mr. Balogh’s comments suggest that Yahoo is eager to build out other parts of its Internet business.

Naturally, Mr. Balogh didn’t tip his hand and name specific targets. But he gave some clues, indicating that Yahoo needed to push deeper into the next wave of social networking products. He also said the company was under-represented in the area of smartphone applications.

Nearly three years ago, Yahoo reportedly offered nearly $1 billion for Facebook, but there was no deal. Since then, Facebook’s popularity has exploded.

Yahoo’s efforts to create a social-networking sensation on its own have come up short. Remember Yahoo Mash? It never took off.

Yahoo has been a somewhat active acquirer in recent years, but its largest deals focused on advertising network companies, like Right Media and Blue Lithium, or minority stakes in overseas Web companies, like Gmarket or Alibaba.com.

What might Yahoo buy in the social-networking arena? PaidContent.org considers the question and suggests Bebo, which is owned by the AOL unit of Time Warner and may or may not be for sale, or hi5, a venture-backed social network that recently had a round of layoffs.

More likely, perhaps, is a deal for a smaller venture with a lower profile.

“We’re getting the pulse of companies you might not know about,” Mr. Balogh said Wednesday, “as well as interacting much more aggressively with companies you do.”

Source:nytimes.com