Personal Video Consolidation: Motionbox Acquires Viddyou

New York City-based Motionbox today announced it has acquired its competitor Viddyou without disclosing terms of the deal. The companies are aligned in that they both provide freemium personal video services, though the buy was a bit of a mercy purchase as the Viddyou founders had indicated publicly they were looking to get out of the video-sharing business and say they will only be staying with Motionbox “for at least the duration of the migration process.”

Motionbox founder Chris O’Brien told us Motionbox is particularly interested in Viddyou’s work around webcam capture and Facebook integration.

San Francisco-based Viddyou was one of the first video sites to support HD uploads and streaming, but as of June it had only 50,000 users, most of them choosing the site’s free version. The startup had raised $200,000 in funding.

Motionbox, on the other hand, has done a good job of consolidating the personal video market and getting people to pay for its services, picking up deals to power video for big sites like Shutterfly and AOL. The company has $17.2 million in funding.

Comments have been disabled for this post