While developers scrambled to cash in on the photo-sharing gold rush while Instagram rose to prominence and then got sold to Facebook, Aviary took a different approach. Rather than build a consumer-facing app, the company decided to build a platform that allows other networks to include its photo-editing suite. It was a brilliant play and has paid off, as Aviary has announced that its platform has edited over 3 billion photos.
Editing those photos are 35 million active users from 3,500 partners using the Aviary SDK.
The impressive part of this milestone is that it doesn’t even include all of the photos edited with Twitter’s integration, which went into effect last December. One could assume that Twitter didn’t want its numbers leaking out with the rest. A little over a month ago, Photobucket went all in and started using Aviary’s platform, as well. Add Flickr, and all of a sudden you’re getting a picture of just what type of damage Aviary can do in the space.
Recently appointed CEO Tobias Peggs had this to say about Aviary’s ridiculous growth curve:
There’s no doubt that those numbers have surpassed our wildest expectations. In our first year, users edited 1 billion photos. In the past 6 months, they’ve edited 2 billion more. Our active monthly user count is now over 35 million people strong, and they have collectively spent 3,804 years editing photos with Aviary. This is how the past few months have looked:
To kick up more dust for SDK adoption, Aviary will be holding a Photo Hack Day on April 6th at Facebook’s Menlo Park campus. Details on that aren’t available yet, but when you’re a developer looking to focus on building an app instead of having to focus on photo-editing tools such as filters, cropping and auto-brightness, those development cycles can speed up and apps will get shipped faster.
I’ve followed Aviary’s progress over the past 18 months and can’t help but wonder how Adobe feels, as its Photoshop product could have easily been packaged up and offered in an SDK, thus earning it the spot that Aviary has grabbed. When companies move slow or lack forward thinking, new names can emerge and grab a market. Aviary has grabbed the mobile photo-editing market, and it’s a huge one.
[Photo credit: Flickr]
Aviary’s mission is to power the world’s creativity. Aviary provides developers with a robust, customizable photo editor that can be plugged into consumer-facing apps on iOS, Android, Windows Phone and HTML5 in minutes. Hassle-free integration: easy to integrate with just a few lines of code. Customizable: The look and feel of the photo editor can be changed to match the brand. Cross-platform: Aviary SDKs are available for all major mobile platforms and HTML5. Easy to use: Anyone can pick up on the intuitive editing...
Tobias Peggs is CEO at Aviary - the mobile photo editing company, based in New York City. Before Aviary, Tobias was CEO of Boulder-based OneRiot. Tobias led OneRiot through its pivot from consumer-facing search engine to socially-targeted mobile advertising platform – ultimately leading to acquisition by Walmart. At Walmart, Tobias was responsible for mobile products in non-US markets - driving the UK from zero to 50% of weekly global mobile revenue inside 12 months. Prior to OneRiot, Tobias led strategic...
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