Yahoo has acquired the video creation app Ptch in a move to bolster its photo and video platform technology. The startup announced in a blog post that it will be shutting down on January 2.
Ptch was started by Ed Leonard and Hans Ku and was incubated by motion picture studio Dreamworks Animation. Its mobile apps were aimed at helping users take their photos and videos and turn them into “beautiful, shareable movies.”
It will be interesting to see how Yahoo intends to use Ptch’s technology to enhance their offering — perhaps embed it within its Flickr mobile app to allow photographers and videographers the ability to create more engaging media content? While Flickr has been a mainstay for photo storage, Yahoo may be facing some pressure to continue innovating with its social network. Just last month, Flickr announced a new way to turn your photos into a hardcover album.
Of course it will be interesting to see how well the technology and teams play nicely with other acquisitions Yahoo has made in the video space, specifically Qwiki, Jumpcut, and others.
As listed in its announcement, users have a few more weeks to download their Ptches from the startup’s website or save them to their phone’s camera roll. From there, all files could be deleted from the servers.
Here’s Ptch’s blog post announcing the move:
We launched Ptch just over a year ago. Our passion and our mission was to give you the best way to make and share beautiful movies made from the photos and videos on your phone. Well, someone noticed!
Today, we’re excited to announce that Ptch will be joining Yahoo! As part of the Yahoo team, we’ll be able to focus our efforts and leverage our technology to make Yahoo’s photo and video platforms the best in the world.
As part of this transition, Ptch will shut down on January 2, 2014. Until then, you can download your ptches on ptch.com or save them to your camera roll from the Ptch app on your phone:
- On ptch.com, go to your profile page. Click on the title of the ptch and then click on the download button.
- In the Ptch app, go to your profile. Tap the share icon under the ptch and then tap “Save to Camera Roll.”
Thank you so much for being a Ptch user and fan. We are grateful for your support and look forward to bringing you more exciting products through the Yahoo platform in the future.
All the best,
Hans and the Ptch Team
Photo credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
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