Valleywag is reporting that MySpace has acquired Photobucket. Although no one has the financial details of the deal but the price tag is rumored to be between $250 – $300 million. The two companies had a thorny past with MySpace twice banning Photobucket videos and photos on MySpace. The latest ban led to a lot of PR for Photobucket and was later lifted. Apparently the acquisition talks were a reason behind the removal of the ban.
Photobucket was founded in 2003 by Alex Welch and Darren Crystal and rode the MySpace bandwagon as a backend photo-storage service for MySpace users. Photobucket generated $6.3 million in revenues last year and estimate to hit the $25 million revenue mark this year. The site has 40 million registered users.
Although its good news for Photobucket, but this likely marks an end to exit via the acquisition route for many startups who are making photo and slide sharing widgets for the MySpace crowd. Amongst them some of the famous ones are Slide and ImageShack. Our previous coverage of Photobucket is here.
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