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Flipboard has purchased Ultravisual, a small Brooklyn-based app maker that offers elegant photo and video creation and collaboration software for Apple’s iPhone iOS.
Terms of the deal for the seven-person company — which was backed by Technicolor — were not revealed, but it was in stock. Mike McCue, CEO and co-founder of the high-profile Silicon Valley online content distribution app, said the move was a talent acquisition to allow Flipboard to enhance publishing tools for its product. Ultravisual is often compared to Facebook’s Instagram, with perhaps a little of Tumblr mixed in.
“With the popularity of our online magazines, we want to give our users the ability to create more easily and beautifully,” said McCue in an interview yesterday. “And the Ultravisual team will be building out our next generation of tools to do that.”
McCue said Flipboard users had created more than 10 million of these online magazines using its software; the company is adding 200,000 users daily. It claims it has 100 million users overall of its software.
But it is facing increased competition from sites like Yahoo and Pinterest and needs to differentiate itself to consumers, publishers and advertisers. Still, Flipboard has raised funding that valued it at $800 million.
McCue said that the company is also prepping more new products for the fall related to its acquisition of Zite, the news reader app that it purchased from CNN in March, as well as introducing video ads. It is also, he said, considering how to add in native advertising, the new marketing de jour requirement for Web firms, to its magazine creation offering.
Here’s the press release on the Ultravisual deal:
ULTRAVISUAL JOINS FLIPBOARD
Flipboard Acquires Technicolor-backed Company’s
Team Effective ImmediatelyPalo Alto, CA — September 8, 2014 — Today Flipboard announced it has acquired the team at Ultravisual, a Technicolor-backed company. Flipboard and Ultravisual have a shared vision — that content, beautifully presented and organized around interests, can connect people in meaningful and moving ways. The Ultravisual team will bring its insights and expertise to Flipboard effective immediately.
“We are inspired by Ultravisual’s approach to information design, their pixel-perfect engineering and visually stunning interfaces. Additionally, their deep understanding of how people collaborate around collections of content is particularly exciting since it is so relevant to the future of magazine making on Flipboard,” said Mike McCue, CEO of Flipboard.
The Ultravisual team has designed an experience that lets people easily share images, videos and comments around their interests and passions. The team’s expertise complements Flipboard’s focus on curation and will allow the company to create an even more robust, social and immersive experience for magazine making on Flipboard.
“We started Ultravisual with the belief that everyone is inherently a creative communicator, and that today’s social platforms were missing crucial ingredients that support them in their desire for deeper self-expression,” said Ultravisual founder Neil Voss. “We strongly admire Flipboard — a company that is shaping the future of how people share and experience content in beautiful and truly meaningful ways. We are extremely excited to join Flipboard and help shape the way people express themselves alongside the world’s best editorial.”
In its continuous quest to innovate, Technicolor encourages its talent to develop and build businesses that provide immersive experiences for the consumer, and is focused on helping entrepreneurs to bring their ideas to fruition with the backing of strong technology expertise.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
