As reported on TechCrunch.
by INGRID LUNDEN
Looks like Lockerz, the social commerce and photo sharing service, may be moving on to yet another chapter in its life.
After laying off 30% of its Seattle HQ staff,closing down its San Diego office, andshutting down its Plixi photo sharing APIearlier this year, the company is now launching a new fashion site, Ador.
A tipster tells us that Lockerz is shutting down altogether and relaunching, but as of right now, the Lockerz site looks like it is still operational. Ador, meanwhile, is in an invite-only phase. We have reached out to the company to confirm what is going on.
The launch of Ador, in any case, is one more sign of how Lockerz continues to search for new ways of bringing in more users and scale to its service. Lockerz was founded in 2009 and built an early reputation as a place to post photos to share on sites like Twitter — a service that may have proven popular, but perhaps difficult to monetize. That operation picked up extra challenges after other photo sharing services like Instagram emerged, and Twitter took photo sharing into its own hands. Indeed, Lockerz claimed that it was Twitter’s changing terms of service that led it to close down its Plixi API. A second source tells us that the Plixi API had driven “90% of the traffic to Lockerz.com and its mobile site.” (Again, we have not confirmed this with the company.)
Lockerz has to date raised at least $43.5 million in funding. Investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Liberty Media, DAG Ventures and Live Nation, with the most recent round, a $7.5 million venture round, coming in October 2012.
While we can’t confirm whether or not Lockerz is pivoting or rebranding, what we can see is that Lockerz has registered a trademark for “Ador,” along with “A Ador” and (bizarrely) “A”. “A ADOR is a product and service created by Lockerz, Inc.,” the Trademarkia entry reads. Ador is also currently hiring an iOS developer in Seattle.
An about page on Ador.com, meanwhile, describes a fashion-focused site where people can collect images that they like and share them with others, as well as use the site to purchase the items, and track when tagged items go on sale.
In other words, Ador’s services sound similar to some of those being offered on Lockerz, which has been transforming itself from a photo sharing service into a photo sharing service with a fashion/celebrity/e-commerce angle to it. “Discover the latest in fashion, beauty and entertainment,” the Lockerz site reads today. “Get rewarded for sharing what you love with our community of stylish shoppers.” In February 2012, Lockerz updated its look with a Pinterest-style grid layout and infinte scrolling.
When we covered the layoffs in January, we noted that key employees, such as head of mobile Daniel Marshalian, were still working at the company. According to Marshalian’s LinkedIn profile, he has now left. Mark Stabingas — who took over as CEO of Lockerz after founder Kathy Savitt the role left to become CMO of Yahoo — is still there. It’s not clear if Savitt remains chairperson, a role she took when Stabingas took over.