If you are a user of Vizify, the personal website builder that creates visual-based biographies and snapshots of your social life, take note. You have just a few weeks – until April 7 – to archive your bio. That will buy you just a few extra months of time before the site is shut down and all personal data will be gone for good.
That’s because Yahoo has acquired Vizify and, as part of the deal, will be shuttering the Vizify service.
What are the important points that all users – free and paid – need to know?
First, it is important to bear in mind that you have the option to archive your bio as a kind of “snapshot” at your Vizify URL. It will remain in place from now until September 4, when the site will be shut down. Once your bio is archived, it will be just like a photograph. No edits can be made, and it will no longer update.
You have to decide on whether or not to opt in to the archive option by April 7. If you choose not to archive your Vizify bio by then, your bio will be deactivated shortly after that.
One feature which is not on the table is downloading your bio. Vizify has made it clear that this will not be possible.
Vizify’s FAQ page has assured paid users that they will be refunded in full. This will include every single cent you ever paid to Vizify, not just the current month. The page also reveals that the archiving function has not even been finalized yet. When it is, it will not archive the 2012 Year On Twitter feature. The joint project, created with Twitter, allowed Vizify members to log in to an archive of all their 2012 tweets, assembled in a kind of collage.
Other companies are trying to fill the gap left by Vizify’s departure. One of them – BrandYourself – is tweeting to encourage people to sign up with them. Another possible option is About.me.
So what does Yahoo intend to do with Vizify now that they own it? Will the employees go to work at Yahoo? Why did Yahoo acquire Vizify? Does Yahoo intend to start their own similar service? Or was this just an acqui-hire strategy intended to bring some new technical talent to Yahoo?
A Yahoo spokesperson told Small Business Trends via email:
“Yahoo has acquired Vizify, a company that turns your social media data into interactive infographics, videos, and more. We have found in Vizify a company that shares our passion for visualization technology and the user experience. The team of five has joined Yahoo’s media product organization in San Francisco.”
Image: Vizify
I’ll have to admit that I am not really that familiar with Vizify. In fact, I only get to know about it now that it has been acquired by Yahoo. So I guess the acquisition is a good move so that Yahoo can take hold of Vizify’s template and use it to serve their followers.
I have always loved Vizify and think that it outshines the two “replacement” by a landslide. Being a Yahoo user, I only hope that Yahoo will capitalize and rebrand it as their own
Or close it, which Yahoo has a bad habit of doing when they buy something. Most of these acquisitions are “talent-grabs” – the Vizify team are going to work for Yahoo in San Francisco.