Mobile Video Sharing App Socialcam (YC W12) Acquired By Autodesk For $60 Million

http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/17/socialcam-autodesk-60-million/

by ramanujam • 14 years ago

62 36 14 years ago

techcrunch.com

confluence• 14 years ago

Can someone with more knowledge explain the reasoning behind this?

Unfortunately I'm at a loss : (

Congrats to the social cam team though - good to see a justin.tv export doing so well.

volaski• 14 years ago

Traffic inflation via user manipulation => Lots of spam traffic => People hate it but because it's spammy it still gets traffic => Socialcam guys realizes nothing good will come out of the situation => A fool approaches => Sell.

No one's hurt--the founder's made money, the investors made money--except for the users who found out more than they needed to (and wanted to) know about their friends and family, such as a daughter finding out their dad watched bunch of bikini videos and wet tshirt contest videos, etc.

mbesto2• 14 years ago

I think the OP was talking about why Autodesk is buying a social media company.

throwaway_skoog• 14 years ago

I would imagine it is a talent acquisition. Autodesk has been trying to hire for a new cloud team in Detroit and San Francisco for a while...without luck, I think. (I was a reject)

kvogt• 14 years ago

Way to go Michael, Ammon, and Guillaume!

randall2• 14 years ago

I'm totally in shock right now! SO FREAKING PROUD! Do they mark the start of the JTV mafia officially?

sgrove• 14 years ago

Nah, I think it was pretty solid already. I guess this is an interesting inflection point though.

joering23• 14 years ago

This had to be the least innovative startup PG has ever invested in. I literally had at least 3 friends quitting Facebook because they couldn't stand SocialCam spam (yes, I am sure there are ways to turn those off, but go ahead and educate half a glob about it -- this crap should be opt-out, not in).

Now said that, I'm scared that PG will learn a lesson here and continue this route by investing in more of those, just because it can virally grow (read: spam) on Facebook:

PG: what's your idea?

Team: we have this awesome website where every click makes a unicorn poops a rainbow bricks!

PG: what problem does it solve? how we make money?

Team: we haven't figured out this one yet.

PG: can we connect via Facebook?

Team: oh yes, definitely people will want to share photos of their pooping unicorns with others on their Facebook Wall.

PG: ok, that's it! I'm in!

Kiro• 14 years ago

I find it very unlikely that you had "at least" 3 friends quit Facebook because of SocialCam but whatever you say. I personally think this is exactly the kind of startup PG should invest in anyway. It fits the YC model perfectly.

joering23• 14 years ago

oh yeah? So would you mind telling me what was SocialCam revenue model? My understanding is that PG is investing in startups with at least have some sort of a plan of making profits.

pg• 14 years ago

We care more about founders than ideas, and the founders of SocialCam are great in every respect: nice, effective, and good technically. And SocialCam itself is necessarily innovative because video sharing is being invented right now. The app looks simple because they worked hard to make it so.

So the lesson here is actually one that we learned long ago. Great founders succeed.

jmathai2• 14 years ago

Financially, this was probably a great venture. But it's a bit disingenuous to really consider SocialCam as being a positive innovation. It relied on spam and taking advantage of users not knowing that it was "opt-out"[1].

I'm not hating on SocialCam (though I do hate it :)). But let's call it what it is - a good investment.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=socialcam%20sucks

solnyshok• 14 years ago

the app is deceptive, in that it spams feed of the user. I blocked it.

loceng• 14 years ago

Upvoted because this made me laugh.

majani• 14 years ago

I've said it before, and I'll say it again here:

You don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate.

SocialCam negotiated a fantastic deal for themselves. Great sale.

treelovinhippie• 14 years ago

Is the moral of the story here that we should all spam the crap out of Facebook activity feeds?

brackin3• 14 years ago

They couldn't become an Instagram because they knew their growth wasn't sustainable or real in any way. They had to sell or they'd fade into obscurity.

tlogan• 14 years ago

Yes. The point is that you really need to push the envelope if you want to succeed.

I was burned by one of my "advisor" and scaled down Facebook feed posting because he said it was "spam". WRONG ADVICE: competition ran over me.

far33d• 14 years ago

In part, yes.

New distribution channels don't appear that often and when they appear you should rush to be early and aggressive, as they decline in effectiveness over time, which limits competitors' ability to match you.

Of course a strong product and good retention are essential to keeping those users, but you are a video app and this opportunity were to present itself you would be crazy (stupid) not to jump on as quickly as humanly possible.

abstractbill• 14 years ago

Congrats guys!

pbreit• 14 years ago

This is weird. Autodesk? And seems like a pretty early sell for a modest amount considering the property was #1 in a supposedly hot market. Odd.

brackin3• 14 years ago

Because their numbers were boosted using shady tactics that Facebook are starting to stop, when Facebook completely kills these apps their real traffic (videos people are actually uploading) will become non existent.

revorad• 14 years ago

Congrats guys!

randall2• 14 years ago

Shut. The. Front. Door.

Holy. Crap. Guys!

SO PROUD RIGHT NOW I CAN'T EVEN STAND IT!

sanxiyn• 14 years ago

FYI, consumer products group of Autodesk referred in the article includes products such as 3ds Max, Maya, etc.

hornbaker• 14 years ago

SocialCam's main competitor, Viddy, just raised at a $370M valuation, and some data[1] show SocialCam at around 2X the traction of Viddy (post-sharkfin for both). The modest scale of this acquisition is not the kind of comp you want to see if you're Viddy, especially with their Series B terms[2].

I'm curious what the HN crowd thinks – has mobile social video peaked, or has it just not been done well enough yet?

1. http://i.imgur.com/ncvPr.png 2. http://www.businessinsider.com/viddy-series-b-terms-2012-5

brackin3• 14 years ago

Nearly all of social cam's traffic came from the timeline. Viddy is just content uploaded by me or you, so I'd venture to say most of their traffic is real but SocialCam was embedding YouTube videos of women in bikini's, funny clips, etc and whenever you watched one of them it would post on your Facebook timeline, just watching a video made you a user. This is why half of my Facebook friends seemed to have SocialCam accounts but not one of them had actually posted a video.

It's not sustainable and they knew it, Facebook will eventually kill off this kind of traffic so they sold out before the wave completely fizzles out.

Great job to them, was the right decision.

joering23• 14 years ago

Well, isn't the image you provided [1] answering your question already? It has been a trend for a while (hard to determine how organic since both companies spammed the heck out of Facebook wall) and now when the dust settled, there is nothing left behind.

In this example a large corporation agreed to be the one to turn the lights off (vide Zynga purchase of DrawSomething -- nothing can save the dropping audience #s) and so congratulation to PG and SocialCam team: selling rotten eggs is becoming hard to do.

jasonwilk• 14 years ago

Congrats to the JTV and SocialCam Teams!

Mobile Video Sharing App Socialcam (YC W12) Acquired By Autodesk For $60 Million

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