Back in March, we met up with two of the founders of Everpix, who demonstrated to us their technology of automatically organizing photos into collections via their proprietary Image Analysis algorithms. The cloud-based photo management service not only is able to scan an image’s metadata, it can make out objects within an image using semantic analysis. With all this info at hand, Everpix is able to organize photos in a far more advanced manner than most photo organizers. And, with all your photos stored on the cloud and always available, the idea is you would never have to worry about deleting them. The company hoped that by introducing a new “freemium” service and upload tools for Macs, PCs, and iOS devices, the service would catch on. Unfortunately, instead of revolutionizing photo sharing, Everpix has just announced that they’ll be shutting down.
“It’s frustrating (to say the least) that we cannot continue to work on Everpix,” the company wrote on its Tumblr page. “We were unable to secure sufficient funding in order to properly scale the business, and our endeavors to find a new home for Everpix did not come to pass. At this point, we have no other options but to discontinue the service.
Everpix’s investors included Picasa cofounder Michael Herf and former Apple VP Bertrand Serlet. At the time of our meeting with Everpix founders Kevin Quennesson and Pierre-Olivier Latour (both former brainiacs at Apple), it seemed the company was financially stable, upbeat, and off to do great things. But since then, according to The Verge, the company failed to attract enough users to keep pace with the costs of running the site, as well as a failed attempt by Latour to raise $5 million and a failed acquisition by social network Path. Meanwhile, the company was accruing massive bills from Amazon Web Services, which hosted the millions of photos stored.
As the company winds down, Everpix plans to e-mail users about refunds and ways to export photos off Everpix, but with the losses, we’re not sure if the company will be able to offer any compensation. There’s great technology at Everpix and it’s led by some brilliant folks, so let’s hope there’s some sort of happy news toward the end.
