EyeEm

EyeEm (originally Eye'em), pronounced "I am",[2] is a technology company with a global photography community and marketplace that was co-founded by Florian Meissner, Ramzi Rizk, Gen Sadakane, and Lorenz Aschoff in Berlin.[3] Eyeem.com and the EyeEm mobile app is a place for photographers of any ability to share, interact and learn more about photography.[4] The technology company uses artificial intelligence to find the best images to license to brands, agencies or individuals looking for authentic imagery.[5] As of August 2016, the community consists of over 18 million photographers and more than 70M photos.[6]

EyeEm
Type of businessPrivately held company
Type of site
Photo sharing / Social Networking
HeadquartersKohlfurter Str 41/43
Berlin,
Germany
Area servedWorldwide
Founder(s)Florian Meissner
Ramzi Rizk
Gen Sadakane
Lorenz Aschoff
CEOFlorian Meissner
EmployeesOver 70
URLwww.eyeem.com
LaunchedFebruary 2011 (2011-02)[1]
Current statusActive

History

In early 2010, photo enthusiasts Florian Meissner, Ramzi Rizk, Gen Sadakane and Lorenz Aschoff came together to discuss mobile photography. By March, they decided to host one of the world's first mobile photography competitions and host an exhibition. The winners and runners-up were part of an exhibition that took place in Berlin on June 22 of the same year.[7]

During the beta period, EyeEm was an iPhone only app and was called EYE'EM, and managed to have more than 5,000 users from 79 countries.[8] In early 2011, Meissner, Rizk, Sadakane, and Aschoff decided to work on the idea full-time and launched the first version of the EyeEm app on Android and iOS in August 2011 following the beta test period.[9]

In March 2014, EyeEm partnered with Getty Images to distribute photographs taken by EyeEm users.[10] By June 2014, EyeEm had over 10 million users.[11]

In March 2015, EyeEm reached 13 million users and launched Market, its own online marketplace where users can sell their own images.[12] A month later, in April 2015, the technology company raised $18M in Series B funding. The round was led by Valar Ventures and includes existing investors Earlybird Ventures, Passion Capital, Wellington Partners, Atlantic Labs and Open Ocean Capital. As part of the new round, Valar took a board seat at the company.[13] In June 2015, EyeEm launched the Discover Feed, a manually curated feed, in an effort to showcase the “most beautiful images from featured photographers and albums.”[14] In September 2015, EyeEm launched EyeEm Vision (previously called EyeVision), a deep learning computer vision framework that recognizes concepts and ranks aesthetics of images.[15]

In January 2016, EyeEm announced a new partnership with Alamy as another distribution partner besides Getty.[16] In May 2016, EyeEm launched The Roll, an iOS app that analyzes the camera roll and uses computer vision to tag the images and rank the photos by how good they are.[17] The app made headlines at Apple's worldwide developer conference (WWDC 2016), where it was announced that The Roll will be one of the first apps to deeply integrate with Siri, "by combining speech recognition with EyeEm’s aesthetic rank technology".[18] In July 2016, EyeEm reaches 18M users and opens their Web Upload to all users so that it is as easy as possible for Flickr users to upload their pictures to EyeEm Market and join their photography based community.[19]

On February 16, 2019 EyeEm announced that they got hacked and its database was put for sale on the Dream Market. The database consists of roughly 22 million records and included email addresses and passwords. The passwords were stored encrypted (hashed and salted) with the SHA-1 algorithm.[20]

Technology

EyeEm's image recognition technology uses artificial intelligence to tag and rank images based on an aesthetic score assigned to each photo. When users upload a photo via the Web Upload tool, this technology is applied to determine the discoverability of each photo, and suggest keywords. The company applied this to an iOS app called The Roll, which launched in May 2016 and organizes the images on your camera roll.[21]

Funding

The company has raised $24 million to date in funding from Valar Ventures, Earlybird Venture Capital, Passion Capital, Wellington Partners, Atlantic Labs and OpenOcean. In 2018, it was revealed that the company raised an additional $10 million in an internal round from existing investors, with new investors Cipio Partners joining the round.[22][23] EyeEm was incorporated in Berlin, Germany,[24] in February 2011 by founders Florian Meissner, Lorenz Aschoff, Gen Sadakane, and Ramzi Rizk.

Awards
  • Europe's Hottest Startups of 2015 - WIRED [25]
  • Best Mobile Startup 2014 - The Europas [26]
  • Hottest Global Startups of 2013 - Forbes [27]
  • Best Product Startup 2013 - The Europas [28]
  • Best Mobile App 2013 - The Next Web Startup Awards [29]

References
  1. "EyeEm | CrunchBase". CrunchBase. Retrieved 2016-08-01.
  2. Oppong, Thomas (2013-11-15). "12 of the Hottest Startups in Germany". Alltopstartups. Retrieved 2016-08-04.
  3. Pakarklis, Emil (2014-07-03). "How Flo Meissner Created EyeEm Photo Sharing Network". iPhone Photography School. Retrieved 2016-08-04.
  4. Lee, Tyler (2015-04-16). "EyeEm Wants To Help You Sell Your Smartphone Photos but they won't pay you even if they have commissioned work from you, they won't pay you". Ubergizmo. Retrieved 2016-08-07.
  5. Scott, Mark (2015-09-18). "From EyeEm, Technology to See and Tag Photos". The New York Times. Retrieved 2016-08-07.
  6. Cade, DL (2016-07-27). "Exclusive: EyeEm Wooing Flickr Users, Opens Up Web Uploader to Everyone". PetaPixel. Retrieved 2016-08-07.
  7. "EYE'EM" by Mobile Photography, Lulu.com, first edition, October 26, 2010
  8. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/8/prweb8693991.htm
  9. Butcher, Mike (2011-08-04). "EyeEm's Camera App Is A Beautiful New Interface For Photography". The News Hub. Retrieved 2016-08-09.
  10. Robehmed, Natalie (2014-04-06). "Photo App EyeEm Partners With Getty To Sell User Images". Forbes. Retrieved 2016-08-09.
  11. Weber, Harrison (2014-06-25). "Photography community EyeEm launches Android redesign, hits 10M users". VentureBeat. Retrieved 2016-08-09.
  12. Sawers, Paul (2015-03-26). "13M users on, EyeEm launches a marketplace to let you turn your photos into cash". VentureBeat. Retrieved 2016-08-09.
  13. Wagner, Kurt (2015-04-16). "EyeEm Raises $18 Million in Quest to Sell Your Smartphone Photos". Recode. Retrieved 2016-08-09.
  14. Yeung, Ken (2015-07-08). "EyeEm's photo app adds curated content to inspire you and connect you". VentureBeat. Retrieved 2016-08-09.
  15. Dove, Jackie (2015-09-18). "EyeEm wants its new EyeVision algorithm to be the Google of photography". The Next Web. Retrieved 2016-08-09.
  16. Torrens, Lee (2016-01-19). "EyeEm Adds Alamy as Distribution Partner". Microstock Diaries. Retrieved 2016-08-17.
  17. Jan Kamps, Haje (2016-05-12). "The Roll helps you find the best photos on your phone". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-08-17.
  18. Hannah, Gal (2016-06-14). "Artificial Intelligence On Stage at Apple's #WWDC2016". The News Hub. Archived from the original on 2016-09-21. Retrieved 2016-08-17.
  19. Cade, DL (2016-07-27). "Exclusive: EyeEm Wooing Flickr Users, Opens Up Web Uploader to Everyone". PetaPixel. Retrieved 2016-08-17.
  20. Oppong, Thomas (2019-03-16). "620 million accounts stolen from 16 hacked websites now for sale on dark web, seller boasts". Theregister. Retrieved 2019-03-16.
  21. Dwoskin, Elizabeth (2016-10-01). "New Software Sifts Photos for the Most Clickable". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2016-08-17.
  22. http://www.cipiopartners.com/portfolio/
  23. https://www.gruenderszene.de/technologie/eyeem-10-millionen-dollar-geheim
  24. http://www.finsmes.com/2011/08/eyeem-receives-seed-funding.html
  25. Medeiros, João (2015-08-05). "Europe's hottest startups 2015: Berlin". WIRED. Retrieved 2016-08-17.
  26. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2016-10-15. Retrieved 2016-08-18.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  27. Robehmed, Natalie (2013-12-16). "The Hottest Global Startups Of 2013". Forbes. Retrieved 2016-08-17.
  28. Fowler, Nina (2013-01-23). "EyeEm, Wooga, Scolibri Win for Host City Berlin at the Europas". HEUREKA. Retrieved 2016-08-17.
  29. Bryant, Martin (2013-03-26). "Take a moment to meet and congratulate the winners of The Next Web's European Startup Awards 2013". The Next Web. Retrieved 2016-08-17.

See also
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