Marissa Mayer reportedly joins Jawbone board

Could this lead to collaboration between Jawbone and Yahoo down the road?

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has joined the board of directors at gadget maker Jawbone, it was reported  by AllThingsD on Thursday.

Sources say that Mayer has already attended one of the company's board meetings, and that she had been talking to Jawbone about becoming a director for a while, even before she took over the role as Yahoo CEO in July of 2012.

She also currently sits on the board of Walmart Stores and several cultural institutions in San Francisco and New York, including the both cities’ ballets, the National Design Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Mayer, who was the first female engineer at Google, took over the job as Yahoo CEO following a scandal involving former CEO Scott Thompson, who fudged his resume and lied about degrees he had received as an undergraduate.  His time as CEO ended in early May, after only four months on the job.

While at Google, Mayer was one  the lead engineers behind many big projects, including iGoogle, Google News, and Gmail, in the early years of company.

San Francisco-based Jawbone was founded in 1999, and is the maker of products that focus on wireless technology and syncing to mobile devices, including a wireless speaker, wireless headphones, and the Jawbone Up fitness bracelet, which tracks users' physical activity and syncs the data to mobile devices.

The company has raised over $200 million in funding, most recently a $40 million round of funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Deutsche Telekom and Yuri Milner in December 2011.

Since many of Jawbone's products focus on wiresless and mobile, it seems like a good fit for Mayer, who made mobile the focus of the company for the past few quarters.

The company has made a number of purchases to help it compete on mobile including Stamped, video chat service OnTheAir, discovery app Alike, personalized recommendation service Jybe, and news summarizer Summly.

The company has also been updating its mobile apps, including giving Flickr high resolution filters and the ability to share photos on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and email. Just this week, Yahoo completely revamped its iOS app, with Summly integration and an endless newsfeed.

So the company has mobile on its mind, and Jawbone already has a foot in the door.

Of course, there is no indication right now that Mayer joining the board would lead to the two companies collaborating, but it would be interesting to see what they could come up with.

Yahoo and Jawbone could not be reached for comment.

(Image source: https://marshallmashup.usc.edu)