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Print Edition Stories(Update - 1:22 p.m.: SnapMyLife's new owners say it will return this afternoon. See below.)
Some of the 1.1 million registered users who uploaded photos on the SnapMyLife mobile photo-sharing service may have noticed that the service no longer works. That’s, in part, because the company that created it no longer exists.
Investors and executives at venture-backed Cambridge startup Mobicious Inc. quietly sold the company’s assets in January to a Princeton, N.J. company, and shuttered operations. The buyer, Exclaim Mobility Inc., operates its own mobile photo and video sharing service, Pictavision, and is working toward relaunching the service “very soon,” president and CEO Jiren Parikh said in an e-mail.
“We are trying to take the idea to the next level,” Parikh wrote, but did not respond to requests for an interview in time for this story. Currently, the SnapMyLife website displays no photos -- only an error message.
Founded in 2007, Mobicious raised at least $9 million from investors North Bridge Venture Partners of Waltham and Carmel Ventures of Israel. In July, 2009, it hired a new CEO, former Playboy Enterprises Inc. executive Edward Lang, to pursue a new strategy aimed at signing revenue-generating partnerships with media companies.
That strategy was going well, said Mobicious co-founder George Grey, but the company had only a six-month runway of cash to execute on it, and failed to convince investors to re-up.
“The plan went well and we were encouraged, but we just couldn’t get funding and plans and prospects in alignment,” Grey said. “The conclusion was the sale of the company was the best thing to do,” he said, adding the terms of that sale are confidential.
Lang declined to comment. Investors at North Bridge did not respond to messages.
“We were successful at building an audience pretty quickly - and an engaged audience,” said Grey, who is currently working with U.K. home energy monitoring company DIY Kyoto on a possible U.S. expansion. “Our challenge was being able to grow the company to monetization and profitability quickly enough. In the end, we didn’t have time to do the things that Ed was brought in to do.”
SnapMyLife isn’t going anywhere. In fact, the mobile photo sharing service should be back up and running later today, says Jiren Parikh, CEO of Mobicious acquirer Exclaim Mobility Inc. Exclaim, which spun out of venture-backed Exclaim Inc. at the end of 2009, has a portfolio of consumer mobile applications for media viewing and publishing on feature phones and low-end smartphones, into which the service will be integrated.
Parikh declined to discuss those plans, saying the company will announce its strategy in about a month.
Exclaim Inc., backed with about $7 million in venture capital from Edison Venture Fund and Sycamore Ventures, had been making B2B and B2C software since its founding in 2003. In 2008, Parikh took over as CEO and sold off or shut down other business lines, leaving only the company’s consumer mobile portfolio.
With 26 employees, Exclaim is now “extremely profitable,” Parikh said, adding that the company has over 250,000 subscribers. Exclaim’s pictavision application is available in the U.S. for about $4 a month.
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