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Facebook has acquired Divvyshot (YC W09)
- gruseom 17y agoThat is intense! Way to go Sam!!
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- dpritchett 17y agoRelated Valley drama: "I was the one who came forward about the Macbook Air" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1160643 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1160643 Starring Divvyshot founder Sam Odio, Former TechCrunch Intern Daniel Brusilovsky, and Jason Calacanis. Looks like Sam made out OK.
- megamark16 17y agoWow, somehow I missed all that drama when it happened (other than hearing about the macbook bribe). Thanks for the links.
- omarish 17y agoUVa startups are 2 for 2. Way to go, sodio! ps. I've forwarded this to the whole comm school.
- maukdaddy 17y agoAs a Hokie let me add my congrats =)
- dnaquin 17y agoExcited to be working in close proximity with Sam and Paul again! Congrats guys.
- Disparity 17y agoand now there's a good chance you can walk into a random café and see someone using your product.. :)
- ivankirigin 17y agoAwesome!
- icey 17y agoHot damn, congrats Sam, Paul & Michael!
- zaveri 17y agoCongrats Sam!
- lyime 17y agoThis is great news. Congrats to Sam and the team.
- mattiss 17y agoNice man!! I've been following your progress for a while, congrats congrats congrats! Very curious to know how you made out...
- jedberg 17y agoCongrats to the team! Also, thank you for featuring the reddit logo on your homepage. ;) I think we can now conclusively prove that having a reddit logo on your homepage leads to a successful exit.
- gaborcselle 17y agoCongrats Sam, Paul, and Michael!
- ruslan 17y agoOmg, yet another YC startup has been killed^H^H^H^H^Hacquired ? Oh well, hope the team has been offered something little bit more material, beside "the resources and freedom to build cool stuff". :-)
- lanstein 17y agoIf you're going to go to the trouble of doing the witty ^H thing, you should at least delete the correct number of characters.
- bkudria 17y agoAlso, it's 2010, you have ^W at your disposal, which, gasp, kills a whole word!
- tensafefrogs 17y agoYou haven't heard of the new startup fad of being "Kacquired" ?
- lanstein 17y agoI was tempted to make this crack as well :)
- pinstriped_dude 17y agoWhats witty about typing caret H ?!
- tokenadult 17y agoI learned about this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backspace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backspace by putting caret H in a Google search.
- cmelbye 17y agoWhy the heck did they do that? I mean, congratulations to them, but they just released an amazing rewrite of their product that kicked Facebook Photo's ass. I wonder why they didn't go through with it. Sad...
- jfornear 17y ago"...we’ve received an offer we can’t refuse." Translation: $ Plus, Facebook is an awesome product with millions of users. Now they can help Facebook Photos kick its own ass. Sounds like a win-win for everyone. :)
- fauigerzigerk 17y agoAnd I believe that. I would have done it as well. That said, there's something wrong with a startup system that's little more than an elaborate job application process. No problem for that kind of consumer space site but at the end of the day the message is clear: Never trust a startup with something important.
- dualogy 17y ago"Never trust a startup with something important." Well, startups aren't the only types of companies that get bought. Acquisitions are part of the markets and across all types of companies, big or small, young or old. The only difference is that the tech startup scene is so very loud and vocal about all this. In other markets, it's maybe a side notice in a rarely-read corporate newsletter. Nobody cares except for the individuals directly involved. Ultimately, the bulk of these M&As happen not because a product is to be destroyed but in order to take it to another, subjectively "higher" level. It's the same here. Whether that happens, as always, remains to be seen, but both parties were willing to try.
- fauigerzigerk 17y agoMany companies get bought for their products or assets. Some get bought for their customers. Only very few get bought exclusively to hire people. I do follow other industries as well and this is definately unusual.
- Sam_Odio 17y agoHi everyone, Thank you for all the congratulations. We're thrilled to be joining the Facebook team. Frankly it's still taking time for everything to sit in. I'll admit that it's bittersweet. When you spend 18 months obsessing over your company it's hard to see it go. It ultimately came down to the decision that we could touch more people's lives at Facebook...and that's what we've been in this for all along. <shameless thread co-opt> Since this post is going to get a lot of eyeballs I want to take this chance to solicit any suggestions/feedback/complaints HNers have for Facebook Photos. I can't comment on exactly what we'll be doing at Facebook, but I can promise whatever you tell me will get in front of the "right people." :) If you want you can email me directly: sam@divvyshot.com ---- Since their legal department might read this: I'm not yet a Facebook employee and I'm not speaking on behalf of Facebook, anything you tell me is going to be placed in the public domain, you waive all rights to ownership over any IP that Facebook ends up implementing, etc. </shameless>
- timdorr 17y agoView counters would be nice. Larger views would also be nice. And most important, color correction has to be fixed. It's been improved, but whatever they're doing on the backend for compression is muting and killing all color in my photos when I upload them :/
- lotharbot 17y agoFirst off, congratulations! Now, suggestions: 1) ability to resize tag boxes to some degree 2) ability to drag tags around, instead of having to remove and re-click to place them 3) ability to change an existing tag. Example: when my mom joined facebook, I had to go back and delete all of the tags to her name (unlinked) and then add in new tags to her name (linked to her profile). It would have been easier to have an "update tag" button that let me link that tag to her profile (preferably for the whole album, but one-by-one would be better than nothing.) 4) I know facebook stores multiple sizes of photos. It would be neat to have more direct control over that -- say, to pick our own thumbnails, or to allow certain photos to be displayed in higher resolutions.
- cmelbye 17y ago
- adamsmith 17y agoHopefully facebook will let them open source, just as Google did for EtherPad and Remail. It always feels regretful when a service gets bought up and shut down but I hope open sourcing becomes a common mitigating factor.
- Sam_Odio 17y agoThe Divvyshot team has talked about this and it's definitely something that we want to do. Ultimately it depends on Facebook's legal department.
- dantheman 17y agoCongratulations! This is a great app.
- johnyzee 17y ago... Which is now going to be closed down. I have to echo the sentiments of another poster in this thread - what is the point if your startup is just an elaborate job application process? Now a really cool app will be shut down, and a couple of guys will land a job at Facebook. Seems like a net loss to me.
- paraschopra 17y agoUltimately the founders are maximizing their net gain and this offer may seem best to them, at this point of time.
- superjared 17y agoWhat was Divvyshot, exactly?
- oneplusone 17y agoPhoto sharing site. The website is still up so go take a look at the tour: http://divvyshot.com/#to-details http://divvyshot.com/#to-details
- johnfn 17y agoIt's a sort of photo manager that links together photos based on where they were taken from rather than by who took them. It seems especially aimed to manage photos from groups of people.
- ryanb 17y agoFor how much?
- borism 17y agocash or stock?
- axod 17y agoWho made the first move?
- jackowayed 17y agoWhat phase of the moon was it when you guys agreed on the terms? And was Jupiter visible?
- khelloworld 17y agoI'm curious as to how that would matter too much.
- johnrob 17y agoNone of this matters, the only relevant question is whether it's interesting.
- jey 17y agoIt matters for the s ake of increasing the information available about the market for startups. Granted, startups span a huge space, but there's a real dearth of pricing information overall. http://finance.wharton.upenn.edu/~allenf/download/Vita/roleof.pdf http://finance.wharton.upenn.edu/~allenf/download/Vita/roleo... http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=efficient%20market http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=efficient%20market http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=role%20of%20information%20in%20markets http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=role%20of%20informa...
- Balsamic 17y agoContrary to the sentiment of the other replies, I feel this is an interesting question. For those nearing the parapet of potential acquisition it would be interesting to know how affirmative one's actions should be.
- hnsummary 17y agoArticle Summary: Divvyshot is a YC funded group photo sharing website that launched March 2009. They were in the process of looking for angel funding but apparently Facebook made an offer that couldn’t be turned down. Techcrunch claims the purchase price was probably very low and the purpose was to acquire the talent. Divvyshot is starting the process of shutting down their services today and will begin disabling accounts in two weeks. http://hnsummary.com/2010/04/02/facebook-acquires-divvyshot/ http://hnsummary.com/2010/04/02/facebook-acquires-divvyshot/
- andrewhyde 17y agoCongrats for divvyshot!
- josh33 17y agoCongratulations! And for the record, photo sharing can do good in the world. Just think of people collaborating on a disaster with photos, helping to know the extent of the disaster and the help that is needed. Of course, they would need to take photos intermittently so they might actually help, but I think photo sharing is definitely something that can improve the world around us!
- eekfuh 17y agoBig congrats!
- Batsu 17y agoWow, congratulations. If you ever doubted your business, you can feel affirmed now. Being bought out by the largest social networking site with a sizable portion of their site dedicated to photos... well, you obviously did it right. Get out there and do something else right, now :D
- jayair 17y agoCongrats guys!
- TodoneApp 17y agoThat's pretty expedient. The Wayback Machine hasn't even taken a snapshot of you yet. :)
- adriand 17y agoThis is a real shame, because I just started using Divvyshot (first event: birth of my daughter on March 8) and I really, really liked it. It filled a great niche. A year ago, a bunch of friends and family and I went on vacation, and we all talked about trying to set up some kind of photo sharing spot where we could see each other's photos, but it never happened. Divvyshot, though, fit that bill. Facebook doesn't do that for me, so I've downloaded the photos and will be deleting this event. I realize that getting bought out is a positive thing for the founders, but it can be a negative thing for your users, and it certainly feels that way to me. Bit of a letdown. All that aside: great product, and best of luck to you guys in the future.
- TheBranca18 17y agoCongratulations!
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- tocomment 17y agoUmm what is Divvyshot?
- savrajsingh 17y agoballer life!
- medianama 17y agoFor how much? Doesn't mean much without that info.