acquisition

Michael Zhang

Apple Reportedly Acquires Photo Sharing App Color

Well, that's quite a turn of events. Yesterday we reported that photo sharing app Color had denied rumors that the service would soon be shutting down. Based on the app's lack of users, we said that Color would need to find some traction -- and find it soon -- for the $41 million invested in it to pay off. Turns out they won't be needing a miracle after all, because they've reportedly already found one: the app will reportedly be acquired by Apple.

Michael Zhang

Shutterfly Gobbles Up Another Camera Company Photo Sharing Site

Shutterfly is making a habit of gobbling up photo sharing services that camera companies no longer want to run. Less than half a year after acquiring Kodak Gallery from Kodak for a meager $23.8 million, Shutterfly has now taken another photo site off the hands of a company very similar to Kodak: Fujifilm. The Japanese imaging company has agreed to dump its photo sharing and printing business SeeHere into Shutterfly's lap, shutting down the service on November 8, 2012.

Michael Zhang

Google-Owned Nik Software will Continue Offering High-End Photo Tools

When news of Google's acquisition of Nik Software emerged a week ago, most of the tech press (and this blog) focused on one particular offering: Snapseed. It's a highly-acclaimed mobile photo editing app that has been growing like a weed as of late, so it made sense that Google would want it to participate in the ongoing mobile photo sharing war, right? Well, maybe not.

Michael Zhang

Social Photo Aggregator Pixable Acquired for $26.5 Million

Social photo aggregation service Pixable has been acquired by Singaporean telecommunications company SingTel for $26.5 million. The service helps in photo browsing and discovery by aggregating photographs from your various social networks (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Flicker) and using a special ranking system to only show you the interesting images. Billing itself as a "photo inbox", users can also keep up with their friends' photographs on-the-go using the company's popular iOS and Android apps.

Michael Zhang

Facebook’s Acquisition of Instagram Now a Done Deal, Final Value of is $735M

The final hurdles have been cleared, and Instagram is now officially part of Facebook. The startup's 16 employees will be relocating from San Francisco to Facebook HQ in Menlo Park. In an announcement released through its newsroom, Facebook reaffirmed its commitment to keeping Instagram running as a standalone service:

As we said from the beginning, we are committed to building and growing Instagram independently. Instagram will continue to serve its community, and we will help Instagram continue to grow by using Facebook's strong engineering team and infrastructure. We also can’t wait to work with the talented Instagram team to improve the mobile experience.

There will certainly be more resources available at Instagram founder Kevin Systrom's disposal: the photo sharing app is being taken in by a company with roughly 4,000 employees and legions of world class software developers.

Michael Zhang

Facebook’s Buyout of Instagram Finally Receives Government Green Light

Facebook agreed to buy Instagram for $1 billion back in April, but the deal has been in limbo over the past four months while the Federal Trade Commission gave the deal a long look-over. Both online companies got goods news today when the FTC announced that the investigation has been completed, and that the deal may "proceed as proposed."

The "as proposed" part is something that Instagram would probably love to change if it could. As we wrote a couple days ago, the fact that so much of the price was offered as shares of stock, coupled with Facebook's plummeting ticker symbol, means that the $1 billion deal is now only worth around $750 million.

Michael Zhang

Getty Images Acquired for $3.3 Billion by Private Equity Firm

American private equity firm Carlyle Group announced today that it has agreed to drop $3.3 billion to acquire Getty Images from private equity firm Hellman & Friedman. H&F purchased Getty Images just four years ago for $2.4 billion, so it seems that the stock photo company is doing decently well.

DL Cade

Facebook Focusing on Improved Facial Tagging, Acquires Face.com For $50M+

It seems like every month another company is acquired by Facebook; be it Instagram, Lightbox or now Face.com, it's clear that Facebook is looking to make some serious improvements on the photo side of things, and we certainly won't complain about that. Face.com's facial recognition IP has been very well-received so it's no surprise the people over at Zuckerberg Corp Facebook have decided to snatch up the Israeli-based startup before anybody else does.

DL Cade

Nokia Looking to Acquire Scalado and Make Lumia Phone Cameras Even Better

Scalado is a big name in imaging, having come up with some pretty phenomenal ideas like the Rewind and Remove apps -- the first of which made a big splash when it was demoed as part of RIM's BlackBerry 10. And now it seems someone is finally trying to move in and steal Scalado all for themselves: Nokia.

DL Cade

Fujifilm Considered Acquiring Leica and Olympus

In a recent interview with Fujifilm CEO Shigetaka Komori, German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine dived into some pretty intense financial conversation. Much of what was said didn't pertain directly to photography -- discussions about Fuji's involvement in the medical field and cosmetics for instance -- but certain parts of the interview were very interesting indeed.

DL Cade

Yahoo! and the Decline and Fall of Flickr

For those of us who remember it, Flickr was once an amazing place. More than just a website or a bucket of features, it was a vibrant community made up by professional photographers and amateur photo junkies alike. Before Facebook would even allow you to upload anything more than a profile picture, Flickr was the place you went to share your life in pictures. And then, at least according to an article on Gizmodo, Yahoo! happened.

DL Cade

Twitter Tried to Acquire Camera+ After Missing Out On Instagram

After narrowly missing the opportunity to acquire Instagram, it seems that Twitter was eager to try again; this time with one of the most popular paid camera apps, Camera+. Apparently, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey actually met with tap tap tap -- the makers of Camera+ -- to discuss an acquisition shortly after news of Facebook's Instagram acquisition broke.

Michael Zhang

Use a Red Dot Sight for Locating Subjects with Super Telephoto Lenses

Photo enthusiast Chris Malcolm needed a better way to aim his 500mm lens at fast moving subjects (e.g. birds in flight), so he upgraded his lens with a DIY sighting aid by attaching a non-magnified red dot sight:

They're designed to clamp onto a gun sight wedge mount, so some kind of adapter is required. I played with the hot shoe mount, but it was too flexible -- the sight needed re-zeroing at every mount, and was easily knocked out of calibration. The degree of precision required to aim the central focus sensor at the target via the dot also made parallax error a problem on the hot shoe. So I decided to mount it directly on the lens. Least parallax error, plus the geometry of the lens barrel and the sight mount naturally lines it up with the lens. To protect the lens barrel I glued the sight clamp to a cardboard tube slightly too small, slit open to provide a sprung grab on the lens body. The slit also handily accommodates the focus hold button on the lens barrel.

Malcolm reports that the site "works amazingly well", making it "trivially easy to aim the lens at anything very quickly".

Michael Zhang

Adobe Photoshop May Possibly Become Microsoft Photoshop

The Internet was abuzz yesterday due to a secret meeting at Adobe's offices between the head honchos of Microsoft (Steve Ballmer) and Adobe (Shantanu Narayen). The New York Times reports:

The meeting, which lasted more than an hour, covered a number of topics, but one of the main thrusts of the discussion was Apple and its control of the mobile phone market and how the two companies could team up in the battle against Apple. A possible acquisition of Adobe by Microsoft were among the options.

Whoa. Acquisition. That's a pretty deal. So big, in fact, that the rumor drove Adobe's stock price up 11.5% yesterday, adding about $1.5 billion to their market cap.