As a last couple of fights the realization that they can not live without it - or a parasite fusing with its host - Photobucket has concluded a sale of Myspace, News Corporation's social network. The photo-sharing service, which has a symbiotic relationship tough, but with Myspace, may announce an agreement as soon as this morning. Since the end of negotiations late last week, Photobucket has called a meeting of staff by 10 am PST this morning. We have no financial details of the agreement, but Photobucket, and its bankers Lehman Brothers, was seeking at least $ 300. Photobucket, founded in 2003 by Alex Welch and Darren Crystal, took off in 2005 as users of social networking sites like MySpace started using the service to store and display pictures of themselves and their friends.
That has been both a blessing and a curse. The popularity of Photobucket's free service between users of the News Corporation social network took the service to 17m monthly unique visitors, according to Comscore, making it the most popular web site for photos, ahead of rivals such as Yahoo from Flickr.
However, the company increased bandwidth costs have eaten up most of its revenue growth, according to people close to the operation. And administration of claims - that users' loyalty is the site that hosted the photos, not the place where they were displayed - were always a stretch.
A reminder of the balance of power between Myspace and Photobucket came last month when the social network of users found that it could not show videos hosted on Photobucket. Myspace claimed the Photobucket was partially blocked for technical reasons alone, but the movement serves as a warning to Photobucket not to be too sure of an independent future.
Lehman Brothers - the search for a valuation of $ 300 for a company that only $ 6.3m in revenue last year - spoke of the possibility of a bidding war for Photobucket. However, Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation, the parent of Myspace, was always the most likely buyer. And shoving between the two companies - Myspace of bullying, and Photobucket public protest - were always part of the negotiations.
What does the agreement to set up a company that had other piggyback on Myspace? On the one hand, it is encouraging. For a company so dependent on him, made a strong multi Myspace. But Photobucket is the largest of the "widgets," to companies that depend on some of the properties of the larger sites, instead of drawing visitors to their own property. If you still can not develop an advertising business, prospects are dim for other widgets.
Photobucket trying to be a cause for celebration for Alex Welch and his associates, and Trinity Ventures, which invested $ 10.5m in the company last year. But, for other widget makers, which marks something of a ceiling on their potential output.
Update: Michael Arrington, citing "senior" people in Photobucket, said the purchase price was about $ 250 million.
สมัครสมาชิก:
ส่งความคิดเห็น (Atom)
ไม่มีความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น