MySpace To Acquire Flektor
Michael Arrington
34 comments »
MySpace will acquire Flektor, a just-launched service that allows users to create widgets from photos, video and text, according to two sources with knowledge of the deal. This comes right after the news of MySpace’s pending acquisition of Photobucket last week for $250-$300 million. This will be a much smaller deal, in the $10-$20 million range, possibly with an earnout.
Flektor competes with more established startups like Slide and RockYou, and launched only a few weeks ago. Still, insiders say that the company has developed a killer set of tools to create slide shows as well as much more elaborate widgets that include audio, video, photos, text, effects and transitions. In our testing v. Slide and RockYou, Flektor came out way ahead in usability and features.
It’s an odd acquisition, though, since Photobucket also has a slide creation product that competes with Flektor.
But Flektor has a killer team of founders, Jason Rubin and Andy Gavin, who previously co-founded game developer Naughty Dog (Crash Bandicoot and Jak Daxter) and were acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment in 2000. Rubin and Gavin have leveraged their experience with gaming to create an awesome user experience at Flektor. Also, Flektor is custom code built on Flex, whereas Photobucket’s competing offering is built with Adobe’s tools. If Adobe decided to compete directly in this space, MySpace will be in a better position owning their own code.
The acquisition also makes sense from a strategic standpoint. MySpace has massive distribution as the largest site on the Internet. Photobucket brings storage to the table, and the Flektor team looks to be able to create awesome tools for users to create content. The three services actually fit together nicely.
We’ve emailed MySpace and Flektor for comment, nothing from them yet. Update: MySpace replied back declining to comment.
See our previous coverage of Slide, RockYou and Photobucket.
Aren’t they lucky to be bought out a few weeks after launch by the biggest social site in the world.
Good for you flektor!
Lucky bunch that is for sure!!
I don’t know if it’s luck, it looks like they put some good work into this. Still, it seems like just yesterday I was wondering ‘what is Flektor?’ and trying to figure out if the logo was good or not.
Nice work.
nice move!
I predict within 6 months Myspace will have a slide->flektor migration (whether forced technically or by user encouragement).
Man those guys must really hate Max
nice move though probably
Adobe owns Flash/Flex so I don’t see how this is anything but good for them - MySpace is using Adobe either way.
The bigger issue I see is how long before the site is hit with DMCA suits. Don’t get me wrong, the stuff is clearly fair use, but if the competition can take down MySpace by lawsuits they will.
I wonder how long it will take to transition to a new infrastructure…the current load time is slow. Of course, it could be my connection (or Flex). Regardless, good work guys!
hmmm…. i wonder if myspace.com will now have “compatibility” issues with slide and rock you, to drive flektor use…. ala youtube and photobucket back in the day?
where does this leave slide?
would any other media company buy them out?
What is TechCrunch? The all Myspace news site?
So is this a new speed record for acquisitions? A few weeks after launch and they’re bought out already. Wow.
Can anyone think of a $10M+ acquisition that’s happened any earlier in a company’s life?
Just signed up. User interface and usability is incredible. Good job Flektor. First startup in a while I have enjoyed. Features and programming is great!
Yeah! Good Tool. Something that Flickr lacks. Yes you can import flickr photos in almost every tool in the world but then photobucket did that and those users don’t have to do this import/export stuff. We need something INSIDE flickr that does the job. Yahoo have acquired tools like jumpcut but were hardly able to integrate them with flickr or my.yahoo or del.icio.us.
Great management tool and an even better tool… i’d still like to know the startegy behind it and i’m sure we’ll find out over time. Especially, given the recent acquisition of photobucket…
some interesting commentary, as usual —
http://www.capitalai.com/blog/.....l-finance/
Great software/technology buy but the smarter investment is in the man -power/brains behind the company. At the end of the day it’s all about people - technology is always ancillary to the people who envision things and lead the charge to build it.
Life is good!
Peace,
-Saïd
That’s pretty damn awesome. That’s awesome for the founders…but when acquisitions are made this easily, are we in a bubble?
I know these guys and I can tell you it doesn’t surprise me in the least. Jason and I went to school together at Michigan. He is VERY savvy with the business angles. Without knowing any details it wouldn’t surprise me if there was dialog with Myspace before Andy wrote a single line one of code. Their street cred is off the charts. I look forward to finding out the the details.
This site is SO slow. Does MySpace expect this to scale to their millions of users? The flash stuff is cool but is that worth more than a couple hundred thousand dollars? MySpace seems desperate to stop the exodus of users.
10 - 20 mil? Hell, I’d pay that just for their logo. Scrap the site and let’s print some T-shirts with that bad boy on the front.
Everyone knows that MySpace financed the whole Flektor product before it started. The $10-20 mm price tag is just strategery. Shame on Techcrunch for not noticing the obvious play here.
Bob is that true?
bought so soon - after launch —
- I wonder if this wasn’t a startup funded and owned from the start by Myspace …
- Also now if Myspace, blocked Rockyou / Slide - and made a widget that let users easily transition to Flecktor …. from the (2)
- Myspace could copy and push out all developers …..
unbelievable*
i knew this was gonna be big*
;))
amazingly enuf i contacted them over a week ago re: doing something even more amazing then what they currently offer*
oh vellllllllllll
sigh………….
If any of the other co.’s wanna do something UWayCoolr - gimme a Shout!!
;))
the german copycat:
http://www.imageloop.com
Wow.
Have you played around with the advanced editor? This isn’t just a rockyou / slide clone, it’s a full-featured version of Adobe Premiere / Apple iMovie completely in a browser. This is really impressive technology married with a beautiful user interface.
It’s probably worth 20m just to acquire the team behind this.
MySpace didn’t fund it, but they’d been in talks for months. You could see the Flektor guy’s Ferrari in the myspace garage once every few weeks.
It’s true this wasn’t a Speculative Play.
This is was a “Built to Sale” deal from the start.