Facebook has bought Y Combinator startup Divvyshot to beef up its photo-sharing offerings for a combination of cash and equity. The three-person startup was raising angel funding when the social network approached it with a sweeter valuation. The valuation was not disclosed.
Two of Divvyshot’s three employees will join the company to work on its photos team. Divvyshot itself will begin shutting down today. Its existing users can continue to the use the service, but the company won’t issue new accounts, and it will stop making its iPhone application available. The site, which launched last spring, makes it easier to share photos and avoid duplicate albums. Photos on the site are grouped into collections called “events,” where there can be multiple contributors.
After about two weeks, the company will start shutting down certain features like event creation and photo uploads. In about six weeks, the site will redirect all visitors to Facebook.
“It’s a kind of a bittersweet moment, since we have to shut down the project we’ve been most passionate about for the last year, but we’re excited to join the company,” said founder Sam Odio.
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Facebook’s statement said:
“We recently completed a small talent acquisition involving the team at Divvyshot. We’ve 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.”
