Provides Access to Free, Premium Images by integrating PicApp into Blogher Platform and its Network
SAN FRANCISCO, REDWOOD CITY, USA – July 22, 2009 – Contributors to BlogHer.com, the leading community hub for women, can now access millions of premium images from PicApp to include alongside editorial and creative content on their posts.
BlogHer is the leading participatory news, entertainment and information network for women online. It includes BlogHer.com, a community hub for bloggers with more than 54,000 members and 60 editors covering topics from politics, entertainment to food health and family, and the BlogHer Publishing Network of more than 2,500 qualified, contextually targeted sites reaching more than 15 million unique visitors per month. PicApp, a content licensing platform, was selected as the only partner to be fully integrated into BlogHer in order to provide full size, premium and legal images to BlogHer publishers.
“BlogHer’s mission is to create a platform for women who blog to pursue exposure, education, community, and economic empowerment and to provide the guidance and tools to facilitate such a community. We integrated PicApp as a BlogHer publishing tool to provide our members with an excellent resource for licensing and inserting images into their posts,” said Lisa Stone, CEO and Founder of BlogHer. “Having a single source of premium, legal images from prestigious content providers presents a significant value to our community of publishers and editors.”
The application enables publishers to insert a single image, create a photo gallery or an image mosaic with a simple drag and drop of images into a post. Thumbnail images are linked to a canvas page displaying a photo gallery of full size images, presenting opportunity for viewers to interact with the images, view image details and share images with their community. PicApp images, which come fully tagged with metadata, are indexed by search engines thus promoting blog SEO. Each image includes a photographer credit and a caption that maintains editorial integrity.
“PicApp is excited to not only be chosen by BlogHer as its premier image provider but also to be fully integrated into the BlogHer platform. Such product integration represents the real value of our partners’ API and provides a further demonstration of its compatibility,” said Eyal Gura, PicApp CEO. ”Enriching the user and reader experience by encouraging legal and hassle free usage of content is at the core of the partnership between PicApp and BlogHer.”
News and photo agencies licensing images via PicApp include Getty Images, Corbis, Newscom, Splash News and Pacific Coast News. Displaying ads on image canvas page provides a monetization tool on the content owner’s behalf.
About PicApp
PicApp (www.picapp.com) offers online publishers and bloggers a single source of millions of premium quality and free images to use legally and enhance their sites. News and photo agencies licensing images to PicApp include, among others, Getty Images, Corbis, Splash News, and Newscom with new content partners added frequently to meet its global expansion goals. PicApp has over 20 millions images with over 10,000 images updated daily; covering all types of editorial and creative image categories. Headquartered in San Francisco, the company has a development and operations center in Herzelia, Israel and is financially backed by Carmel Ventures.
About BlogHer
Founded in February 2005 by Elisa Camahort Page, Jory Des Jardins and Lisa Stone, BlogHer’s mission is to create opportunities for women who blog to pursue exposure, education, community and economic empowerment. BlogHer is the leading participatory news, entertainment and information network for women online and creates opportunities for its members via a community hub (http://blogher.com), annual conferences and a publishing network of more than 2,500 qualified, contextually targeted blog affiliates. BlogHer provides the highest quality content on a range of topics, with all blogs continually edited to meet strict editorial standards, including content quality, category relevance and blog frequency. BlogHer enjoys a strategic partnership with iVillage, part of Women@NBCU, which includes other NBC Universal brands including Bravo and Oxygen. BlogHer’s investors include Venrock, Peacock Equity, a joint venture between NBC Universal and GE Commercial Finance’s Media, and Azure Capital Partners.
###
Technorati tags: PicApp, free images, images for blogs, breaking news photos, stock photography, copyrighted images, BlogHer, SEO, women blogs, plugin, API
Media Contacts:
Niran Amir
PicApp, Director Business Development
415-874-3222
Business.development [at] picapp [dot] com
Twitter @picapp
For BlogHer:
Lindsey Scott
Racepoint Group
lscott@racepointgroup.com
415-694-6713
