7 ms·
Yahoo acquires Ptch
- junto 13y agoRule 1 when announcing your imminent acqui-hiredness: tell us what your company did when making your announcement, otherwise it is just gloating. Can anyone tell me what ptch actually did?
- Hovertruck 13y agoHow do you pronounce the name of this company? Patch? Pitch?
- uptown 13y agoYahoo(whimsy)!
- codegeek 13y agoTheir homepage says "Make a ptch (pronounced "pitch") by combining the photos and videos on your phone, or using media from your social networks, like Facebook or Instagram. Personalize it by easily adding captions, music, and effects."
- jotm 13y agoPutsch. It's actually a revolutionary online e-government service. /jk
- chadwickthebold 13y agoDoes anyone have any idea how this fits into Yahoo's overall strategy?
- 3am 13y agohttp://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/26/katie-couric-david-pogue-and-why-yahoo-wants-more-video-content/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/26..., Marissa Mayer has made several statements about not having enough clip inventory for all of the ad inventory they have. User generated content is cheap... I have no idea if it's that, technology, acqui-hired, or what, though.
- loceng 13y agoInteresting. Thanks for sharing
- camus2 13y agoThe only strategy is pumping and dumping the stock.
- aaronbrethorst 13y agoI am so tired of the upbeat acquihire 'hey, users, this is good for you!' spin. Our passion and our mission was to give you the best way to make and share beautiful movies made from the photos and videos on your phone. Well, someone noticed! ...Ptch will shut down on January 2, 2014
- jmathai 13y agoIf it is an acqui-hire, then think of the scenario. A team that's probably burned out. The passion probably died a while back and along with it went the mission. What type of announcement do you expect? We appreciate that you signed up for and used our product. Things haven't gone as well as we had hoped and we're exhausted. The truth is we'd be shutting down the site in due time anyway but this is a better option for us and doesn't make any real difference for you, our user. It says they launched a year ago so this particular company was still very new. It may not apply to them but I imagine this applies to most acqui-hires.
- aaronbrethorst 13y agoIdeally an honest one. Edit: here's a thought. Thanks again for your support of Product since our launch. It means the world to us, and it's been a terrific ride for us. Unfortunately, we haven't seen the broad usage of our service necessary to sustain it and we'll be shutting it down in X months. Luckily, BigCo is acquiring our team, which means that we'll have jobs making their quasi-similar product even better. Here's how you get your data: (blah) Here are some similar services you may want to consider moving to: (blah)
- jmathai 13y agoValid. I wonder if the founders feel any pressure from the acquiring company to spin the acquisition as purely positive without revealing the more than likely disappointing outcome.
- anoncowherd 13y agoYou want honesty? How about: "Thanks again for your support of Product since our launch. It means we're now in a position to get acquired by Yahoo. In other words, your support means we get money. We could gush about how much you mean to us, but really, we're running a business here, with the explicit goal of making money. We've done that now, so, thanks!"
- ulfw 13y agoNext: Yahoo! acquires an extra vowel for it's businesses
- gregcohn 13y agoPtch was incubated at Dreamworks and was a pretty high-profile project internally there. As another commenter noted, it was something along the lines of an instagram video type of app, with very notable enhancements (think the equivalent of instagram filters, powered by dreamworks technology and content). It was publicly available in the iOS App Store but didn't get much traction. I'm not sure what's left of the team, as I believe all of the original mobile engineers were already poached.
- wangweij 13y agoAsk the users to download the data? Since they are about photos and videos, why not simply say "if you can provide us your Yahoo account, we will move all your data to Flickr in a private photo set"?
- spader725 13y agoYou're assuming everyone has a Yahoo Account, and they like using Flickr