This past Sunday the 55th annual Grammys Awards aired on CBS. A highlight of the evening was the musical return of Justin Timberlake. Timberlake, now partial owner of Myspace, recently took to the relaunched social media site to promote his first single “Suit & Tie”. Before Sunday nights event, Timberlake used social media yet again to announce the release of his upcoming album “The 20/20 Experience”. This time Timberlake chose to use another social media site he has invested interest in.
Photo: Justin Timberlake
Stipple, an interactive photo sharing service, has received funding from some big names including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byer, Justin Timberlake, and WordPress founder, Matt Mullenweg1. The service recently partnered with Facebook to allow users the ability to post their Stipple photos directly to Facebook. Since the announcement, Stipple has seen a rush of new users, but where Stipple may prove to be most powerful is in the world of social commerce.
What is Stipple?
The San Francisco startup, according to CEO Rey Flemings, answers the 5 big questions: who, what, when, where, why, and how in relation to your content. Stipple transforms your images into interactive content that can be posted onto the Stipple web app or shared onto your social media accounts. Stipple users can publish images embedded with additional functions such as product information, location, price, audio or even video. Simply hover an allocated icon to access other information relevant to the image.
Where’s the benefit?
Stipple is a great resource for advertisers, publishers, photographers, merchants, creatives, and bloggers alike. Its capabilities allow users to engage, measure, and monetize their audience like never before.
“Pick a brand, any brand large or small. More people look at the brand’s images on the open web, than those who visit the brand’s websites and view its ads — combined,” said CEO Rey Flemings. “Images are the web’s largest channel in terms of audience. But no one has had the ability to actually remain connected to and in control of their images on the open web – until now.”
Sites like Pinterest and Instagram have taken advantage of image based sharing, but tracing an image from a third-party source back to the original source has often been a difficult task and has been a primary reason why social commerce has proved to be a challenging venture. That’s where Stipple comes in. With Stipple, image information is kept secure so shared photos are easily connected back to the original owner making it a fantastic tool for retailers to help link images from photosharing sites like Pinterest back to their site/store.
So far Stipple has raised over $10 Million in funding. They are using this money to increase their infrastructure and continue providing users the ability to import, tag, measure, and share engaging content down to each dot. It’s one service that promises to benefit both the brand and the consumer. What are your thoughts on Stipple’s possibilities? Leave us a comment below.
http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/10/stipple-series-a/1