Fox Interactive Media, a division of News Corporation, announced agreements to acquire Photobucket and Flektor. Photobucket is one of the most popular Web-based photo- and video-sharing services, with 42 million users, while Flektor provides a suite of Web-based tools to transform photos and videos into dynamic slideshows, postcards, live interactive presentations and video mash-ups. Terms of the deals were not disclosed.

Fox Interactive Media is the Web’s most-viewed network in the U.S. with more than 45 billion page views per month, according to comScore Media Metrix. Its properties include MySpace, IGN Entertainment, FOXSports.com, AmericanIdol.com and others.

Both of the new acquisitions have synergies with MySpace, Fox's lifestyle portal. Nearly half of Photobucket users link their photos to MySpace or other social networking sites, and Flektor’s tools also give users the ability to publish their finished products to social networks.

MySpace and Photobucket had a public falling-out in early April when MySpace blocked links from  Photobucket, saying that Photobucket violated its anti-advertising rule. The two companies reached an accommodation two weeks later and apparently entered into acquisition talks soon afterward. Social action group Moveon.org, which has protested many of MySpace’s actions that it regards as censorship, has questioned whether the Photobucket acquisition represents a “new MySpace model of blocking innovators, devaluing them, then purchasing them.”