San Francisco — Facebook seems to be following Google’s footsteps at the moment, gobbling up the services that it believes could make the site stronger. Its latest target is Divvyshot, a one-year old photo-sharing startup focused on multiple user contributing and managing online photo albums, to beef up its photo-sharing offerings for a combination of cash and equity.
Divvyshot, a Y Combinator contributor during the Winter 2009 session was founded in January 2009 with $10,000 in seed funding. The three-person startup was raising angel funding when the social network approached it with a sweeter valuation. However, the price-tag was not disclosed.
On its blog, Divvyshot stated that its three employees will now be joining Facebook’s engineering team and extend their expertise on Facebook’s photo service, Facebook Photos, which is the top photo sharing site on the web. They imply that Divvyshot technology will be folded into Facebook Photos, saying “our unique approach to photos will live on.” The Divvyshot site, however, is being shut down.
Divvyshot’s site allows users to assemble their shots into collections, and organize photos around events or themes so users do not need to produce individual albums and alternatively can contribute to just one.
Facebook’s statement said:
“We recently completed a small talent acquisition involving the team at Divvyshot. We have admired the engineering team’s efforts for some time now and this is part of our ongoing effort to add strong talent to help drive the company forward in its efforts to be the central way for people to connect and share information.”
Divvyshot portrays itself as an “effortless way to view and share photos important to you, your friends, and your family. The company was just launched last year, and it is made up of three people: Odio, developer Paul Carduner, and designer Michael Yuan. It is located in San Francisco.
Two of Divvyshot’s three employees will join the company to work on its photos team. Photos on the site are classified into collections called “events,” where there can be multiple contributors.
Starting today, its existing users can continue to the use the service, but the company would not issue new accounts, and the iPhone app will no longer be available for download.
Divvyshot will initially start switching off features in two weeks, at first it will knock out event creation. In four weeks, it will deactivate photo uploads. In six weeks, it will redirect visitors to Facebook.com.
“It is a kind of a sad moment, since we have to shut down the project we have been most passionate about for the last year, but we are excited to join the company,” said founder Sam Odio.
“We know many of our users will have mixed feelings about this move,” says Odio. “While this means Divvyshot as you know it will cease to exist, it is important to realize that our unique approach to photos will live on. This is an opportunity to touch hundreds of millions of users with the best parts of our product.”
Facebook users upload more than three billion photos each month, so it is no wonder then to see Facebook trying to add to its talent pool in this area. This is Facebook’s third acquisition over the last year.
It is unclear whether Facebook will directly implement Divvyshot’s style of arranging photos into collections remains to be seen. Also, financial details of the deal are unknown at this point.
Divvyshot sneak peek from Sam O on Vimeo.