Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook has acquired Divvyshot (YC W09)

divvyshot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 113 posts

Re: Facebook has acquired Divvyshot (YC W09)

#61

Post by dustingetz »

necubi wrote: post #37
Sam_Odio wrote: post #17

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. Since th…

The biggest issue with facebook photos is the resolution. Most people have 7MP+ cameras now, but facebook resizes them to ~600x450. While I can understand facebook being reluctant to store large pictures, it has become the primary way for many people to share their photos, and it's a shame that so much gets thrown away.

hmm, I've never found it to be an issue, and I'm not sure facebook's dominant demographic cares either.

Re: Facebook has acquired Divvyshot (YC W09)

#62

Post by pg »

hyperbovine wrote: post #45
jfornear wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

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.

Re: Facebook has acquired Divvyshot (YC W09)

#66

Post by eagleal »

pg wrote: post #62
hyperbovine wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.

Re: Facebook has acquired Divvyshot (YC W09)

#68

Post by 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.

Re: Facebook has acquired Divvyshot (YC W09)

#70

Post by potatolicious »

Sam_Odio wrote: post #17

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. Since th…

The Java applet is really bad, pleeeease find another way for users to upload their photos.

Here are some major pain points (and some suggestions):

- The reliability of Facebook Photos is pretty suspect - the AJAX picture loader will get hung up randomly, increased reliability here will make the system a lot more polished.

- The Java upload tool really, really sucks. I would even take a Flash uploader over it, and I really despise Flash. Letting the users interact directly with their file systems may not also be a great idea - can you slurp directly from a memory card or camera connected via USB? This may convince more people to use Facebook as their only stop for photo storage.

- Photo API could use some work - right now the Lightroom Facebook plugin can't seem to delete photos. This means that when I make modifications to a photo and re-publish it just creates new photos on top of the old ones. The Flickr API allows overwrites, which means that the files can be seamlessly replaced, preserving comments and other data.

- iPhoto's facial recognition stuff is really really really cool, it'd be great if Facebook shamelessly stole it :)

Post reply on HN