HP Acquires Tabblo

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1. anthropocentric
   

   March 22nd, 2007 at 10:42 am

   What will happen to photo printing services when at-home printers like this become mainstream and inexpensive:
   http://duggmirror.com/gadgets/.....ear_VIDEO/

   It seems that with 1) higher quality at-home printing and 2) higher quality digital displays (with contrast and quality more similar to a printed photo), the “print service” business will tend to decrease over time.

2. Michael Arrington
   

   March 22nd, 2007 at 10:47 am

   I agree. But HP is in the ink selling business.

3. Dwayne
   

   March 22nd, 2007 at 11:14 am

   Good to see another relatively new startup get acquired, they did a great job building up the community quickly.

4. ChrisD
   

   March 22nd, 2007 at 11:23 am

   Seems like a very good matchup. Any way to get a price on the transaction through the rumor mill?

5. rack pallet
   

   March 22nd, 2007 at 11:28 am

   This is a good match; HP is going down though - unless they start acquiring more.

   - Their printers, eat Ink - on purpose… they need to adopt Google’s motto “Do no Evil”

   - Rb

6. Kewtr
   

   March 22nd, 2007 at 11:28 am

   It’s going to still take some significant improvements for home printing photos to be useful for me. I can get mine at the grocery store I am going to anyway in an hour, as opposed to having another gadget, another pile of paper, another ink meter, and another plug in the wall.

   Usually I view images on screen, and the ones I want in a specific format I order online at Walmart. Results are good, and my desk stays slightly less of a mess.

7. trevo
   

   March 22nd, 2007 at 12:02 pm

   HP already has SnapFish. I guess HP loves peanut butter too…

   Just kidding. I think this is a good acquisition for HP, to give people more tools and reasons to print (instead of just printing plain ol’ photos)… in hindsight Tabblo seems like it was built FOR companies like HP.

   Congrats to the Tabblo folks for the vision and excellent execution!

8. David Mackey
   

   March 22nd, 2007 at 12:43 pm

   HP needs to work on their customer service more than developing new products.

9. Jay
   

   March 22nd, 2007 at 1:57 pm

   Just wanted to drop a note and let you all know that Tabblo is powered by Django
   http://www.djangoproject.com/

10. Don MacAskill
    

    March 22nd, 2007 at 2:29 pm

    Yet another photo business for HP to kill (Let’s have a contest - who can name the most dead HP photo sites??).

    Sad, Tabblo looked like it was truly unique and might be going places.

11. Cem Basman
    

    March 22nd, 2007 at 3:11 pm

    The aquisition of Tabblo is part of a huge global strategic plan of HP storming into the picture market. HP is already the market leader in color laser printing. HP is one of the largest digital camera makers worldwide. HP is ramping up in the photo kiosk market with PhotoSmart kiosks and studios. HP simply wants to get the whole food chain in the photo and picture processing market. From A to Z. From picture taking to paper printing. And y’know what? They are going to get it all. They’ve got the money. They’ve got the will. They’ve got the skill. They’ve got the people. At the end of this decade color and photographing will mean simply HP.

12. anthropocentric
    

    March 22nd, 2007 at 3:15 pm

    Wow, you’re a serious HP fan.

13. Cem Basman
    

    March 22nd, 2007 at 3:32 pm

    Not a fan, anthropocentric. I know how they work.

14. Rick
    

    March 22nd, 2007 at 3:41 pm

    After the YouTube/Google deal, another web 2.0 Python-powered startup gets snapped by a big player (Tabblo was built with the Django web framework). Congrats to the Tabblo dream team! I hope they can survive HP bureaucracy.

15. RRoss
    

    March 22nd, 2007 at 6:35 pm

    Kudos to Tabblo for coming up with a great service. I wonder why Kodak didn’t buy this company since one of Ofoto’s founders is on the Tabblo board.

    SmugMug continues to move up the rankings : it came close to passing Kodak Gallery in the last couple of months, and bigger than Snapfish and Shutterfly (based on Alexa page rank and reach) : http://tinyurl.com/35qz5b

    oh, and don’t forget Zazzle which shot up in February

    Wonder which gets acquired next : SmugMug or Zazzle…

16. Alan Phillips
    

    March 23rd, 2007 at 9:29 am

    Does printing go away when every household has a wireless picture frame parading the lifetime collection of images on the living room wall? http://www.wirelesspictureframe.com