Facebook has bought up Divvyshot, a one-year-old photo sharing startup. Divvyshot’s site lets users share photos by grouping them into collections called “events” so users don’t need to create separate albums and instead can contribute to just one. On its blog, Divvyshot says its three employees will now be joining…

Nearly two months after Google’s rocky introduction of ‘Buzz,’ the sharing service remains under fire from privacy advocates; eleven congressmen have written a letter to the chairman of the FTC urging the agency to investigate complaints about the service—and, perhaps more ominously for Google (NSDQ: GOOG), also look into the…

News aggregator Daylife will begin reselling pictures posted by users of London-based citizen-photo journalism site Demotix to create an “open image wire service.” The arrangement is an expansion of Daylife’s existing image programs. Last fall, Daylife began partnering with Getty Images—which is also an investor in Daylife—on products that lets…

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has bought up online photo-editing service Picnik—the latest in its string of recent acquisitions. In a blog post, Picnik says that nothing will change immediately at its popular site and that its staffers will continue to work on Picnik from Google’s offices in Seattle. One obvious result,…

Scrapbooking site Scrapblog has raised another $2.5 million from Disney’s Steamboat Ventures, the company tells us. Scrapblog lets users choose from various themes that they can use as backdrops for their photos; the scrapbooks can either be shared online or printed. This is a competitive market, which has generated quite…

With the dust settled on Getty Images’ $96 million acquisition of Jupitermedia’s online images business over a year ago, *Getty* is introducing a new subscription model aimed at user-gen and professional photographers. All subscriptions will go through ThinkStock, which was part of Jupiter Images. It will be combined with Getty’s…

Turns out Kodak’s November partnership with Twitter photosharing service TweetPhoto also gave it equity in the service. Asked about approaches to partnerships, Eastman Kodak CMO Jeffrey Hayzlett told delegates at the Midem music conference in Cannes, France, on Saturday: “I really like the one we did with TweetPhoto - so…

Panraven, a startup which offers an online “story-telling” service, has raised $2.725 million in funding, according to an SEC filing. The company lets users arrange photos, text, content, and video online and then share their creations using social networking tools; users can also order hardback copies of their compilations. The…

Despite its current financial troubles and continued layoffs, Forbes Media has bought FlipGloss, a photo publishing and online distribution platform. Terms were not disclosed. The site has been funded by Forbes since its founding in March 2008. Forbes COO Tim Forbes has advised the company. Other advisers have included Forbes…

DailyBooth, a nine-month-old social network that lets users share photos in real-time, has raised $1 million in a round of funding from a group of big name investors and VC firms, according to the WSJ. Investors include VC firm Sequoia Capital, tech investor and incubator Betaworks, Digg co-founder Kevin Rose,…

A startup launches a popular web-based service that goes up against a desktop-based rival, forcing the established player to counter with an online service of its own. But the startup’s service keeps on growing—and ultimately the long-time leader buys out its new competitor. It happened last month with Mint.com, which…

Online photo printing and sharing service Shutterfly has acquired mobile app developer Tiny Pictures. The deal, first reported by TechCrunch, calls for Shutterfly to pay $1.3 million in cash for the company and another $1.3 million in restricted stock to employees, which is contingent on certain performance targets. It’s a…

Online b-to-b photo service LifePics has raised $1.98 million in a round of funding. The nine-year-old company offers a host of online imaging solutions, so that professional photographers and retail photo businesses can accept orders and offer other services to customers online. The company says it counts more than 20,000…

No deep thoughts needed to figure out what happened here: Photobucket co-founders Alex Welch and Darren Crystal are leaving Fox Interactive Media (NYSE: NWS) following the end of their two-year earnout. The News Corp unit bought the photo-sharing site in July 2007 for $250 million in cash plus performance-related payments…

Sampa, a Seattle startup that made it easy for families to set up a central place to share photos, blog posts and other information online, is shutting down. In a message on its site posted Friday, Sampa says it wasn’t able to pay its bills to keep the service up:…

It was almost inevitable. This time last year widget-maker (because that’s what they were called, then) Slide was sitting on $50 million worth of new funding from Fidelity and T-Rowe Price. Now, the S.F.-based startup is slashing its sales force, GigaOm reports, in what CEO Max Levchin says is a…

Until now, Microsoft’s Photosynth has been mostly a consumer-oriented application, used to bring multiple pictures together in a 3-D photo landscape. But Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) said Thursday it would integrate Photosynth with its Virtual Earth mapping platform, in hopes of selling the package to business customers. The idea is that…

Flickr is now offering video uploading to users of its free service. Last year, Flickr Pro members got to start sharing 90-second video clips; now, free members can upload two videos per month, in addition to the 100MB monthly photo-upload limit already in place. Pro members get an upgraded feature:…

It looks like user-gen photo publisher 8020 Media is getting a second chance at life. The company has been bought by photo equipment marketer Adorama Camera and an unidentified investor, 8020’s former President and CEO Mitch Fox told paidContent. The “multi-year” deal makes Adorama the main partner in 8020 community…