Sad. Another company failing and shutting down with its employees going to work at Yahoo.<p>Sorry, I mean they got acqui-hired.<p>EDIT: There are other comments saying that people are being unnecessarily negative. Maybe so. But this is a company with customers that is shutting down without a single apology to people that depend on their service. Overall, the post just feels like doublespeak, talking about "your transition" (to what?), and:<p><i>"we realized we’d found a partner who shared our passion for user experience, design, and visualizing information."</i><p>...which is why they've told us to shut down all the work we've been doing for the last few years and start something different!
There's a surprising number of negative comments here. Have any of you ever started a company and been involved in an acquisition process from the front lines?<p>If not, I'd suggest being a little more careful with your wording. Your statements come across as worse than naive--they come across as petty, with a tinge of idiocy. I'd just make sure I was more informed about these decisions/processes before making commentary on them.
Our company is in the Portland Seed Fund portfolio also. We know Todd and his team and they are good people. They worked incredibly hard at building up Vizify.<p>While it may be a bummer for users, I hope this is a positive step for the team and congratulate them on their effort!<p>EDIT: It is worth mentioning that Vizify raised in the valley, but ran the company out of Portland. Only a few consumer internet companies have done this so far, but in each case it has brought a lot to the city by helping build out the startup ecosystem up there.<p>It is way different running a consumer internet startup in Portland from the valley. We couldn't do it--we moved down to CA.<p>More info and sentiment from Rick Turoczy, who is close to the Portland tribe: <a href="http://siliconflorist.com/2014/03/05/visualize-exit-portlands-vizify-acquired-yahoo/" rel="nofollow">http://siliconflorist.com/2014/03/05/visualize-exit-portland...</a>
The negativity around acqui-hires is pretty ridiculous. Every single tech company pays for the ability to hire smart people, and the basis of the hiring process is centered around the quality of a candidate's resume. In this case, there is a group of smart people (Vizify) who have a very real accomplishment (Vizify), which trumps a fact-laden piece of paper any day.
There are only a handful of comments in this thread and they're already seething with vitriol. Can anyone give context? Or is this just general "Yahoo, blech," sentiment?
I've had a Vizify profile for a while and have been underwhelmed with the product. I'd like to hear from someone who really likes it and/or gets value from it.
I don't know any details of the transaction - but I'm very excited to see Yahoo picking up this team and their social data visualization tech. Yahoo seems to be testing its boundaries as a content provider in a lot of good ways.
I knew the name sounded familiar, and then I realized why. I've been to these sites listed in twitter profile bios and they all looked so spammy/useless/devoid of content when I visited them.
This is a great group of guys, congrats to the team. Startups a hard, very hard. They made a great product and worked on what they love, if they get to continue to work on what they love at Yahoo, more power to them. I just hope they are able to keep their scrappy and inquisitive style.
What's the use of this? I would imagine Facebook's end of year review was a clone of Vizify's idea? Anyhow, how was this idea be profitable for this startup to stay alive? I have never heard of it to be honest. To me this looks like <a href="http://osrc.dfm.io/" rel="nofollow">http://osrc.dfm.io/</a> and FB's end-of-year review
As a Vizify user, I'm saddened that they will be shutting down. I really enjoyed their service and it served as a great "bio" website.<p>Pleased for the designers and developers, though, they had great success, IMO, and I hope they will make their mark at Yahoo.
I don’t understand: one comment (politely) regrets their closing their service; half are encouraging and short; therefore, why is the other half of the comments about how people are so negative about the whole thing?
"Since last summer, we’ve been engaged in a conversation with some of the incredible folks at Yahoo about the ways this more visual approach to data can inspire and entertain. As our conversations progressed, we realized we’d found a partner who shared our passion for user experience, design, and visualizing information."<p>This shit makes me cringe, such bullshit. They offered the right price, we wanted money. That is all