PaidContent.org: Yet Another Pic-Sharing Buyout ? Yep!

Rafat hints at Another Pic-Sharing Buyout ? :

Another pic sharing application has been bought out by a major digital media company, I've heard, and is being announced as soon as Monday...no, it wasn't among the list we put up...
Hint: the company buying it already bought out a big player in the same market last year...

So let's see. Who bought a "big" player in the space last year ?

• Google picked up Picasa for $4.7M
• CNET bought Webshots for $70M ($60M cash + $10M earn-out)

Based on the "big" qualifier, I would venture that CNET is picking up someone in the sharing space to lay on top of Webshots ? Picaboo ? Heypix ? Smugmug ?
Heypix would seem to make the most sense from a complementarity standpoint: moblogging, posting to other blogs, statistics, etc. And since the company recently launched, there would not be a lot of legacy to integrate.

Any other idea (or rumor :-) ?

Update: Bingo! It is Heypix. Official announcement on the site is here. Congratulations to the founders of Windup Labs, maker of Heypix. A take-out 4 months after launch is... unusual. Rafat had the scoop.

PS: Any prediction as to who gets bought next week ? Bookies could almost get something going here.

Comments

[Rafat]

your deductive reasoning is right..the name's in there :) i can't dislose it until i have a final confirmation...

[devendra]

There are a lot of other acquisition candidates including pixparty.com

[Don MacAskill]

Not smugmug. We love being independent - getting bought would squash our creativity and innovation. Besides, we're profitable and growing fast, so what would be the point? :)

[Sandra]

Um, Fotki?

[Eli Chapman]

I met with the two founders of WindUpLabs/Heypix about 8-10 weeks ago or so at a coffee shop in Arlington, MA. It's not 4 months of technology that's being bought. If you google around, you'll see that James and Eric have been at this for more than two years. The project started as a p2p photo shoebox. It was their really rich Windows photo client that attracted me to them in the first place (that and something Eric posted on metafilter). The client has a nice UI, was easy to use right away, and included tagging better than any other photo client I've seen. It wasn't exactly what I needed for the project I was working on- but it was clear that they weren't going to make any major deals until they'd played out every offer and inquiry on the table. Congrats to the two of them. Well timed. I hope the deal was a good one.