EyeEm

EyeEm is a free photo sharing mobile app for the iPhone and Android platforms. EyeEm allows users to take and edit photos using seventeen filters and twelve frames, and share the photos in its own website, via email or five social networks Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr or Foursquare.[1] The service offers an automatic tagging system that provides a topic, a location, and an event for each photo taken. The user may keep or change the tags, or upload the photo with no tags at all. The tags then group the photos into Albums or keywords that result on streams of images.[2]

History

Florian Meissner, a photographer and one of the company founders, explains that he lost his digital camera while in New York and he had to use his iPhone to take photos. “I managed to pick up a used iPhone from a friend as a replacement and discovered a whole community of passionate people on Twitter and Flickr who enjoyed sharing their daily phone shots,” explained Meissner. “Inspired by this kind of mutual appreciation, the ambition behind EyeEm is to connect people beyond their existing social networks.”[3]

The company was founded in January 2010 and by March of the same year it had its first call for submissions for a mobile photography competition. The winners and runner-ups were part of an exhibition that took place in Berlin in June 22 of the same year.[4]

During the beta period, EyeEm was an iPhone app only and it was called EYE'EM, and it managed to have more than 5,000 users from 79 countries.[5] The app was launched in August 2011 for Android phones and iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. As of December 2011, EyeEm has users in 134 countries, who have created 35,000 unique location tags, and more than 15,000 events.[6]

In January 2013, EyeEm briefly overtook the market-leader in mobile photo networks, Instagram, in iTunes app store downloads.[7] As a result, one German technology site estimated that a figure of 50,000 new daily downloads for EyeEm was realistic. [8]

Funding

The company that produces this app was incorporated in Berlin, Germany,[9] in February 2011 by founders Florian Meissner, Lorenz Aschoff, Gen Sadakane, Ramzi Rizk, and Christophe Maire. In 2011 EyeEm received funding support from Passion Capital and Pan-European Venture Capital fund Wellington Partners.[10]

References

  1. ↑ http://www.eyeem.com/
  2. ↑ http://www.macworld.com/appguide/app.html?id=1115227&expand=false
  3. ↑ http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/8/prweb8693991.htm
  4. ↑ "EYE'EM" by Mobile Photography, Lulu.com, first edition, October 26, 2010
  5. ↑ http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/8/prweb8693991.htm
  6. ↑ http://news.yahoo.com/eyeem-2-0-puts-picture-wherever-130254570.html
  7. ↑ http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/19/eyeem-photo-app-snaps-at-instagrams-heels-in-itunes-free-app-charts/
  8. ↑ http://netzwertig.com/2013/01/16/beeindruckend-berliner-foto-sharing-app-eyeem-ueberfluegelt-instagram-im-us-app-store/
  9. ↑ http://www.finsmes.com/2011/08/eyeem-receives-seed-funding.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+finsmes%2FcNHu+%28FinSMEs%29
  10. ↑ http://news.yahoo.com/eyeem-2-0-puts-picture-wherever-130254570.html