

Facebook has acquired Divvyshot (YC W09) - kevintwohy
http://divvyshot.com/facebook

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Sam_Odio
Hi 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>

~~~
BrandonM
Face recognition technology has been around for years. A partner and I even
implemented a rudimentary tool for it in a few weeks in an AI course. I always
wondered why Facebook couldn't take advantage of this and save the world
thousands, if not millions of cumulative hours tagging photos.

~~~
Caligula
Two reasons come to mind,

Even a 5% error rate is unacceptable. People may take offense to machine tag
errors.

Second, facebook probably likes the time commitment people make to tagging
photos and adding friends in order to tag them to the picture. It increases
communication and also adds cases where people get facebook invites so they
can get tagged.

~~~
BrandonM
The solution to the 5% error is to do the tagging automatically, but make the
uploading friend confirm each photo to ensure that it was tagged properly.

I don't consider tagging itself to be inherently social. Being in a social
setting with someone is what was social. Putting a picture of someone on
Facebook is social. You can still comment on an auto-tagged picture just the
same as a manually-tagged one. The only difference is that you save some time
for those people who contribute the most (the friends who take dozens of
pictures at every event and then spend a couple hours uploading/tagging them
the next day). By decreasing the necessary effort of photo-sharing, I would
expect to see more uploading and tagging.

A side benefit is that it could eventually make discovery easier. How many
pictures do you have at a bar or somewhere else with a bunch of people you
don't know in the background? How many times have you hung out someone
somewhere, have a picture of them, but didn't get or can't remember their
name? Automatic recognition gives you a better chance of meeting some of these
people again.

For those saying this is a privacy issue, the uploader doesn't have to see the
auto-tag of a non-friend. Instead, the person who has been auto-tagged could
be notified and have the option of allowing/disallowing the tag to occur.

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cmelbye
Why 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
"...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
And 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.

~~~
jfornear
I know what you mean, but I'm not sure how "important" photo sharing really
is. I think we're kidding ourselves when we think we're going to "make the
world a better place" in this industry. Other industries do much more to "make
the world a better place" than ours does but they don't talk about it near as
much as we do.

~~~
hyperbovine
I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. Not to crap on anyone's
parade, but Sam Odio's comment above, "It ultimately came down to the decision
that we could touch more people's lives at Facebook," rings extremely hollow
to me. I can think of about 1000 better ways to touch peoples' lives, if that
is really your aim, and none of them involve web apps or startups. Again, I am
absolutely not trying to detract here. These guys had a smart idea, worked
their asses off, and were justly rewarded. But can't we just admit already
that we are capitalists? This ubiquitous tendency in the startup crowd to hide
the profit motive behind a wall of lofty ideals is just silly.

~~~
pg
He was not bullshitting. It's scary how much power Facebook is starting to
have in recruiting and acquisitions because of their large and highly engaged
user base. Hackers want an audience.

They have a very concentrated form of koolaid over there. I've been surprised
by the effect it's had on some of the most skeptical people I know.

~~~
eagleal
It's not in the same order of magnitude (and maybe off-topic), but _from the
leaked documents of Twitter, Google was directing much of the Twitter APIs
implementation_ , from their tone. And twitter was in the boom stage (2009,
sorry can't find a source, techcrunch iirc).

I don't have any experience in acquisitions by large companies, but from the
twitter story (above) I made an idea of the tension going on. It's like you're
a soldier and their the commandant during a war, most of the time you just
can't say no.

edit: I meant, if you say no, you have to be prepared for the consequences.

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adamsmith
Hopefully 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
The Divvyshot team has talked about this and it's definitely something that we
want to do. Ultimately it depends on Facebook's legal department.

------
ryanb
For how much?

~~~
borism
cash or stock?

~~~
axod
Who made the first move?

~~~
khelloworld
I'm curious as to how that would matter too much.

~~~
jey
It 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/roleo...](http://finance.wharton.upenn.edu/~allenf/download/Vita/roleof.pdf)

[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%20informa...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=role%20of%20information%20in%20markets)

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jedberg
Congrats 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.

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adriand
This 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.

~~~
lotharbot
I'm curious... what is it, specifically, that you want from your friends-and-
family photo sharing that Facebook doesn't offer? I can't figure it out from
your description.

------
dpritchett
Related Valley drama:

"I was the one who came forward about the Macbook Air"
<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
Wow, somehow I missed all that drama when it happened (other than hearing
about the macbook bribe). Thanks for the links.

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superjared
What was Divvyshot, exactly?

~~~
oneplusone
Photo sharing site. The website is still up so go take a look at the tour:
<http://divvyshot.com/#to-details>

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omarish
UVa startups are 2 for 2. Way to go, sodio!

ps. I've forwarded this to the whole comm school.

~~~
maukdaddy
As a Hokie let me add my congrats =)

------
Disparity
and now there's a good chance you can walk into a random café and see someone
using your product.. :)

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josh33
Congratulations! 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!

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Batsu
Wow, 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

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dnaquin
Excited to be working in close proximity with Sam and Paul again! Congrats
guys.

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icey
Hot damn, congrats Sam, Paul & Michael!

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gaborcselle
Congrats Sam, Paul, and Michael!

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dantheman
Congratulations! This is a great app.

~~~
johnyzee
... 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
Ultimately the founders are maximizing their net gain and this offer may seem
best to them, at this point of time.

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TodoneApp
That's pretty expedient. The Wayback Machine hasn't even taken a snapshot of
you yet. :)

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ruslan
Omg, 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
If you're going to go to the trouble of doing the witty ^H thing, you should
at least delete the correct number of characters.

~~~
tensafefrogs
You haven't heard of the new startup fad of being "Kacquired" ?

~~~
lanstein
I was tempted to make this crack as well :)

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mattiss
Nice man!! I've been following your progress for a while, congrats congrats
congrats! Very curious to know how you made out...

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gruseom
That is intense! Way to go Sam!!

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andrewhyde
Congrats for divvyshot!

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medianama
For how much? Doesn't mean much without that info.

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lyime
This is great news. Congrats to Sam and the team.

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TheBranca18
Congratulations!

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jayair
Congrats guys!

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eekfuh
Big congrats!

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zaveri
Congrats Sam!

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ivankirigin
Awesome!

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tocomment
Umm what is Divvyshot?

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savrajsingh
baller life!

