Snapfish Acquires Motionbox

by Jordan Yerman | July 15, 2010 at 08:39 am

221 views | 0 Recommendations | 0 comments

HP-Owned Snapfish Buys Motionbox

Though the terms of the deal were not disclosed, Snapfish has acquired Motionbox, a video-sharing and -hosting startup. Motionbox provides the video management tools for Shutterfly, which is a major rival to Snapfish for mass-market usage, as well as social media site Bebo.

Current Motionbox users must download their videos by August 10. After that date, service will be ported over to Snapfish and Motionbox will cease to operate as an independent entity. If you are a Motionbox premium user, you will have a free year of Snapfish video usage.

Snapfish is in turn owned by Palo Alto-based Hewlett Packard (HP).

Alongside Motionbox's consumer offering, the company also ran a professional video-hosting service that gave businesses a nonbranded video player and a higher-priority spot for encoding. Some of its customers included companies like Gawker Media, AOL, Bebo, and Snapfish rival Shutterfly.

Snapfish began life as a mail-order scan-and-print company, with which users would send in rolls of exposed film in prepaid pouches for scanning and printing.