Microsoft exec returns to nest after not doing much with WebFives
Michael Toutonghi left Microsoft's nest in 2004 and eventually founded Vizrea, a mobile photo- and video-sharing site in 2006. Despite $4 million in funding, that didn't really go anywhere. Oops! Turns out little birdie wasn't quite so ready fly. So what's an exposed wantrepreneur to do?
Change the company's name to WebFives and sell its assets to mother Microsoft for whatever you can get, of course. WebFives users have until the end of the year to find another place to store their content before Microsoft closes down the service and yanks the videos and photos offline. Not that there were that many of them, according to Toutonghi.
"[Microsoft's buy] was more the technology value than the user base," Toutonghi told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Microsoft's hometown newspaper is too polite to say this, but the fact that it was an asset sale, not a full-fledged acquisition, means that this was a face-saving way to welcome back a prodigal employee.
