A little more than a week after announcing its acquisition by telecom giant SingTel, Pixable is releasing a substantially redesigned version of its iPhone photo aggregation app.
As with the old version, the Pixable app aggregates photos and videos from social networks, highlighting the ones that will most likely be interesting to you. The big theme with the redesign, the company says, is “letting the photos shine.” That may seem like an odd claim for a photo app. Weren’t the photos front-and-center before? Well, the change is obvious when you compare the old home page to the new one. Both pages offer selections like “Most Recent Photos,” “Top Of The Day,” and “Top Of The Week,” but the thumbnail images previewing each section have been dramatically enlarged and really take center stage. The photo view has also been redesigned to maximize the size of images.
There have been other changes to the UI, including an iPhone 5-optimized layout, a move to a lighter color scheme, and the replacement of the old menu bar with a new sliding menu. In addition, the app features expanded integration with Twitter and Instagram. For Twitter, you can now tap to see all of a photo’s retweets and to reply or retweet the photo yourself. For Instagram, you can just tap to like or comment on a photo.
Pixable co-founder Inaki Berenguer tells me that the redesign has been underway for a while, and that it would have happened acquisition or not. But he adds, “The excitement and momentum created by joining forces with SingTel paired with the iPhone 5 release created the perfect opportunity.”
The same team continues to operate independently out of the same office, Berengeur says: “We are still Pixable, but we are just now part of a bigger and exciting family with great support from one of the world’s largest mobile operators.” The app now has 4 million users.
You can download Pixable here.