Dailybooth, one of the first startups that helped bring online photo taking and sharing to the masses, is to close its doors, according to users who have received a shutdown note from the service.

Update: The full goodbye email from Dailybooth is at the bottom of this post.

Twitter users that have received confirmation are mourning in droves but, it an unfortunate twist, the firm’s blog — where we’d expect to find confirmation — is suffering from issues (Chrome says it is infected by malware – but the last post is dated 2011, anyway).

Just got an email saying DailyBooth is shutting down. Sad, but I can see why. I jumped to Instagram a long time ago.

— Kandirra (@kandirra) November 12, 2012

Dailybooth is officially dead. Expect an official email soon if you haven’t already got one.

— Lee Smith (@CosmicScale) November 12, 2012

Furthermore there is no mention on its Twitter account — @dailybooth — and, to add further uncertainty, the shutdown email is curiously addressed to *IUSERNAME*, this is not exactly how you’d expect users to be addressed and could indicate a rogue emails…or just a mistake from Photobooth’s side.

It does look like the shutdown is genuine, but we’ve reached out to the company — which raised more than $7 million in funding to date — to be sure.

It wouldn’t come as a massive surprise given the way that photo apps like Instagram have taken off. Dailybooth was a hit before Apple, Android and others brought about the smartphone revolution which has changed how most of us interact online.

The writing has been on the wall for a while and Airbnb acquihired the team behind Dailybooth (and its photo app Batch) in July 2012, as Techcrunch reported. The startup had earlier announced that the service was “no longer under active development” back in March of this year, as per a note on Crunchbase, so this closure would tie-up those loose ends.

More on this when we have it.

Update: Internaut has the text of the goodbye email, as below. Users will not longer be able to upload photos to the service from November 14, but they do have until the end of 2012 to download their (much-cherished) data:

A picture a day, every day. DailyBooth was launched based on that simple idea. We never could have imagined what it would become more than three years later.

The community each one of you helped create is truly one of a kind. There have been many unforgettable memories created amongst us and none of this would have been possible without you. For that, we’re truly grateful for what you’ve helped DailyBooth become.

Regrettably, this email comes with unfortunate news. DailyBooth is shutting down. Keeping the website running is no longer feasible.

On Wednesday, November 14th, the website will no longer allow you to add new content. Shortly thereafter, the website will be changed allowing you to only be able to download your photos. You’ll be able to download your photos until December 31st, 2012. After this date all content will be permanently deleted.

We can’t thank you enough for everything.

Related: Is Dailybooth the Next Great Social Experience?

Hat tip Richard Lai, screenshot via Colby Ludwig - headline image credit