Like a squabbling couple finally realizing they can’t live without eachother — or a parasite fusing with its host — Photobucket has concluded terms of a sale to Myspace, News Corporation’s social network. The photo sharing service, which had a quarrelsome but symbiotic relationship with Myspace, may announce the deal as early as this morning. After final negotiations at the end of last week, Photobucket has called an all-hands staff meeting for 10am PST this morning. We don’t have the financial details of the deal, but Photobucket, and its bankers Lehman Brothers, were looking for at least $300m.
Photobucket, founded in 2003 by Alex Welch and Darren Crystal, took off in 2005 as users on social network sites such as Myspace began to use the service to store and display pictures of themselves and their friends.
That’s been both a blessing and a curse. The popularity of Photobucket’s free service among users of the News Corporation social network took the service to 17m unique visitors per month, according to Comscore, making it the web’s most popular photo site, ahead of rivals such as Yahoo’s Flickr.
EXCLUSIVE: Photobucket goes to Myspace – Valleywag
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Joi Podgorny 