Facebook To Buy DivvyshotFacebook To Buy Divvyshot

Facebook has bought the online photo archiving site Divvyshot, which has asked users to prepare to move their pictures off the company's servers.

Divvyshot announced the acquisition Friday, saying it had "received an offer we can't refuse." Financial details were not disclosed.

"Facebook is well known as a company where engineers are given the resources and freedom to build cool stuff and, as a result, the only place where we felt that we would fit in," the Divvyshot statement said.

While the acquisition is good news for Divvyshot founder Sam Odio, it's likely to be a headache for users, who will have to remove their original photos by downloading them as Zip files.

Odio and Divvyshot designer Michael Yuan and developer Paul Carduner, the only employees of the 1-year-old company, acknowledged in the statement that the closing of Divvyshot could upset some users.

"We know many of our users will have mixed feelings about this move," the statement said. "While this means Divvyshot as you know it will cease to exist, it's important to realize that our unique approach to photos will live on."

The company said the site would function normally for the next two weeks, after which Divvyshot would begin to turn off features every two weeks. First to be disabled will be the ability to create group photo albums called "events," followed by photo uploads. Lastly, visitors will be redirected to Facebook.

Odio, Yuan, and Carduner will join Facebook's engineering team and focus on Facebook Photos.

Divvyshot enabled users to organize photos into collections in which groups of people could contribute pictures, eliminating the need for each person to post their own separate photo album on a collective trip to the beach or a friend's wedding. Divvyshot was designed to be accessible through a computer's Web browser or through an Apple iPhone application.

In joining Facebook, the startup becomes part of the largest online social network on the Web. Facebook last month surpassed Google as the most visited Website in the United States, according to Web metrics firm Hitwise.