HP’s Snapfish announced they have acquired MotionBox.  Video sharing service Motionbox will be integrated with photo sharing site Snapfish.com’s services as of August 10, 2010.  A statement  from MotionBox.com declares “we have always envisioned a service that would enable customers to manage all of their digital memories – still photos as well as videos – in one place, unlocking even more creative ways to share unforgettable moments with friends and family.”  The Motionbox replacement from Snapfish will be called Snapfish Home Videos.

Personal video sharing customers should be OK but it seems like the migration is being rushed and was not well thought out. Right now, personal video sharing customers are being told their videos will not be transferred automatically but instead they will need to download their videos from Motionbox and upload them to Snapfish before August 10, 2010.  REALLY???  Motionbox claims they are “working on an easy way to have all of your videos transferred to Snapfish.”   They go on to say, “For now, if you want to move your videos over to a Snapfish account, — or to any other video service — please go to your video folders (at http://www.motionbox.com/folders), where you can select individual videos to download to your computer and upload to Snapfish.” REALLY???  Talk about half baked – rather than making it easy for 2.8 million Motionbox users to switch to Snapfish they are giving those users opportunity and reason to move to other services.  Why wouldn’t they just wait until they have an “easy way” to migrate before they gave the August 10th deadline?  The Motionbox acquisition reportedly cost Snapfish around $20 million. That’s around $7.15 per user. Peanuts for HP I guess.

For business video sharing customers, the news is worse.  According to Motionbox.com, the Snapfish service will “not offer HD playback, online editing, or video embedding.”  Motionbox Premium members will be given the option to switch over to Snapfish and receive a “free full year on Snapfish Home Videos” but HD video and video embedding are probably fairly critical features for anyone paying for a video sharing service.  The company does point out that those features are likely to come online at some point as Snapfish now own’s the Motionbox platform.  Again, the question is what is the rush?  Why not integrate those needed services and then start issuing deadlines?

PRO subscribers are being told to hold  tight as Snapfish “does not currently have commercial or professional video hosting service.”  However,  a deal seems to be in the works to help the PRO subscribers as Motionbox says they are “currently arranging a deal to enable PRO customers to transfer their videos and their accounts to another excellent pro service.”  Again, you would think this could have been worked out before press releases and deadlines were issued.