The Miami couple got the idea for Scrapblog three years ago after attending the first Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, where they had seen photo-sharing sites such as Flickr, which had recently launched (and was later acquired by Yahoo! Inc. for $30 million in 2005). It occurred to the pair that, just as traditional photo albums had evolved into more creative scrapbooks, the same would likely happen with online photo-sharing sites.

The duo initially developed the concept with a team at Nobox Marketing Group, the interactive marketing agency they founded in 2000 with another couple, Jayson Fittipaldi and Monica Heitlaufat (who are also co-founders of Scrapblog). Nobox is still privately held by the foursome and boasts such high-profile clients as Toyota Motor Corp., Lexus (a division of Toyota), Procter & Gamble Co. and the Mozilla Foundation (maker of the Firefox browser). 

Incorporated last year, Scrapblog gained the attention of venture capitalists when Garcia presented the service at the influential DemoFall 06 conference.

"Scrapblog is particularly exciting because it offers its users significant customization and flexibility while remaining drag-and-drop easy," blogged Longworth Venture Partners' Jason Yau on completing the startup's March funding. "Scrapblog is very appealing to a broad segment of the market that is interested in a tool that gives them more flexibility than a choice of several presets and generic templates."

Since launching in April, more than 1 million scrapblog pages have been created.

Garcia tells Tech Confidential that the investment from Disney closed in June but wasn't made public until this week to allow time to develop services around Disney properties. The media giant uses Scrapblog to let fans of its  programs, such as ABC Family's 25 Days of Christmas and hit TV show Ugly Betty, create online scrapbooks and other features. Scrapblog's other users include March of Dimes, which used the service for its Every Baby has a Story campaign.

Garcia says the partnership with Disney is paying off in much more than just venture capital. "It's driving hundreds of thousands of users to scrapblog.com." he says. - Mary Kathleen Flynn 

See March 27 post from Longworth Venture Partners
See Dec. 11 post from Tech Confidential