TechCrunch
RIP Snapjoy: The Dropbox-Acquired Photo Service Is Shutting Down
Snapjoy, the online photo storage service that Dropbox acquired in December, has some bad news today for its users: it is shutting down. The company noted the information in a blog post, as well as in an email it’s currently sending out to users (I am among them: I’m copying the text below).
Users have until July 24 to download their pictures and related data — at which point, they will all get deleted.
Yes, it’s often the case that when a big company makes an acquisition of a smaller one, the latter business gets shut down, either because the purchase was really an acqui-hire or because the bigger company is prepping for, well, something bigger with the fruits of that product. (Yahoo has become a very regular buyer and closer of startups, with many of those questions about where all that talent and product is going still unanswered.) But this is a somewhat surprising turn of events for Snapjoy: when Dropbox bought the company, it stopped taking new sign ups but it also committed to keeping the service open.
Given that decision to keep Snapjoy running, it looked like part of the reason for that acquisition was for Dropbox to start developing a photo service of its own, with Snapjoy as the anchor for it. (For those who are not familiar with Snapjoy, the Y-Combinator-backed company is/was a great platform that not only let users amalgamate pictures from several different photo libraries — great for people like me who have dabbled in using several, and have stored pictures in all of them — but it then had a wonderful feature that called up pictures from that bigger group in a kind of slideshow, to remind you of long-forgotten events. All of this was usable on both the web and via a mobile app.)
It may still end up being the case that Snapjoy’s technology will live to see another day, and that Dropbox will indeed launch a photo service — it seems like an obvious move for the company as it moves to do more than just offer cloud storage, by providing different services on top of that infrastructure. However, today’s news means that it won’t be a continuous process for Snapjoy’s existing users, or indeed for Snapjoy the product.
The news points to a couple of bigger issues:
For those who sometimes feel uneasy about cloud anything, this once again highlights that your cloud-stored data is only as solid as the proprietary platform that is storing it. Once that company decides to call it a day, that’s all, folks.
The other is regarding the message that this sends out to users of other Dropbox services — particularly those that Dropbox has acquired, like Mailbox. So far, Dropbox has shown no signs of planning to shut the virally-popular email service down, but Snapjoy should serve as a reminder that a picture can change in a snap.
We have reached out to Dropbox for comment and will update this post as we learn more.
Hi xxx,
After two years of building Snapjoy, the time has come for us to shut down the service. It’s been a journey unlike anything we’d imagined, and we can’t thank you enough for your support and input along the way.
As of today, June 22nd, no more photos can be imported into Snapjoy and the Snapjoy iPhone app will no longer be available. Your photos will be available to download until July 24th from the website. After July 24th, all photos and data will be permanently deleted.
To download your 450 photos, follow the steps below:
Visit https://www.snapjoy.com/export from your computer.
Login using your Snapjoy account.
Download the zip files containing your 450 photos.
Thank you,The Snapjoy team
Stripe's Payments Payout Technology For Collaborative Consumption Startups Now Processing Up To $500K Per Day
A few weeks ago, payments startup Stripe made it significantly easier for collaborative consumption startups to take and process payments. The company’s new technology allowed for payments to be distributed to multiple bank accounts, which is an issue for startups like Lyft, which are attempting to pay drivers with different accounts from the accounts of users. Stripe says that the service has taken off, and the company is now paying out up to $500,000 per day in these payouts to collaborative consumption startups alone.
To put that in perspective on the Stripe side of the equation, the payments company processes “millions” of dollars in transaction volume a day. But whether that number is $5 million or $10 million, half a million is a big chunk of change for collaborative consumption startups.
So why has this specific payments technology grown so fast in adoption? It’s mainly because of the challenges these startups face in paying out money to workers, says Stripe CEO Patrick Collison. When a buyer of a service (i.e. a person using Lyft for transportation) pays, the money can only be transferred to one account. So Lyft has to have payments sent to their own account, and then sent to the driver (i.e. the seller). According to Stripe, using the previous system, Lyft would require 10 full-time employees to manage payments to and relationships with their drivers. With Stripe’s new technology, you can insert a few lines of code into your app, and you will enable the ability to add multiple accounts to where money can be sent.
Users of Payouts include Lyft, Exec, Sidecar, Postmates, Homejoy, Kitchensurfing, HomePolish, Flightfox, Weddings.com, and Shoptiques.
Collison adds, “The part of Stripe that I’ve always found most interesting is the idea of facilitating new commerce that wouldn’t otherwise happen. Payouts is turning out to be a big part of that. These new networks are efficient, intelligent replacements for offline behemoths. It’s a cliché to say stuff like ‘I can’t wait to see what gets built,’ but I think the companies created with Payouts are really going to be transformative.”
Part of Stripe’s allure as a payments platform is that the company’s API, and integration is extremely simple and easy to use for developers. As many developers have commented, using Stripe allows an online site to accept payments in a matter of minutes. With Payouts, we’re seeing the company take this strategy a step further by now making transactions themselves more seamless for users in a specific vertical. You have to wonder if we’re going to see Stripe go after the specific pain points of verticals in the payments space, especially in areas of innovation (i.e. collaborative consumption) where there is fast growth. Stay tuned.
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