Shelby TV announced today that it has been acquired by Samsung Electronics. The company has announced that even though it would remain a separate entity, it will be closing the doors on its service later in the year. Word of the acquisition confirms speculation on the acqui-hire of the team that was first reported late last month.
Taking to its blog, the company outlined some of the changes that are coming up for the service. Even though they would remain an “independent entity and will retain its business, products and customers,” the service will be shutting down. Users of the service would have until July 1 to pull any of their videos from the site. To ease the process, Shelby TV created an export tool and a set of instruction on the process.
By not pulling in the assets of the company, it is clear that Samsung was only looking at picking up the talent behind the app and service. The team appears to be moving onto a new project, starting from the ground up under Samsung. However, the company still thinks that users are still looking for a different type of solution for video content.
“Our team is excited to develop new technology to meet these challenges as part of Samsung Electronics,” said the blog post. “Working with Samsung Electronics means we’ll have the resources to start fresh, building products that change the way we watch and discover our favorite content, now and long into the future.”
Shelby TV gained some popularity for being a hub for videos to share over social media. The service would pull videos from various sources including Hulu, Vimeo and YouTube to a central page as a part of video discovery based on a user’s taste. The company had struggled to gain a foothold after running into several issues with its apps, as well as a undergoing a redesign after the trouble.
