Photo-sharing service
Photobucket
has agreed to be purchased by
Fox
Interactive Media, the branch of
News
Corp that also owns social networking site
MySpace.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but earlier reports suggested that the
company had offered as
much as $250m for Photobucket.
A spokesperson for Fox Interactive told
vnunet.com
that the company expects to close the deal within 30 days.
Photobucket chief executive and co-founder Alex Welch said on a
company
blog that the acquisition would make little difference to the service.
"First and foremost, we expect nothing to change in our day-to-day
operations. After the transaction is closed and finalised, the plan is to
operate Photobucket as an independent, standalone company within [Fox
Interactive Media]," he wrote.
Photobucket has around 40 per cent of the online photography market,
according to an April study by research firm
Hitwise.
The move will also link Photobucket with social networking giant MySpace.
Last month, a
feud over a
movie promotion lead MySpace to block Photobucket video clips from user
profile pages causing a public spat between the two companies.
Fox Interactive also announced the purchase of
Flektor,
an online service that allows users to edit and create photo and video
mash-ups.
Despite Welch's assurance that nothing would change at Photobucket, Fox said
that it plans to spread technology from both of its new acquisitions throughout
its network which includes
Foxsports.com
and
Americanidol.com.
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