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RECAP MOBILE PHOTO CONNECT 2016
October 25, 2016
Alexis Gerard and Hans Hartman
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Overall conference takeaways ................................................................................................... 3
How to succeed in the photo app business ............................................................................... 4
The future of visual storytelling .................................................................................................. 6
Monetizing photo apps through mobile output .......................................................................... 8
The Next Big Thing: user-generated VR content ...................................................................... 10
Fireside Chat: A Conversation with Facebook’s Head of Immersive Media, Eric Cheng ........ 12
Fireside Chat: A Conversation with Haje Kamps and Jackie Dove ........................................... 13
The Mobile Photo Connect Awards .......................................................................................... 14
Show & Tell Presentations ........................................................................................................ 16
Sponsor Contacts ..................................................................................................................... 18
Attending Companies .............................................................................................................. 20
Resources ................................................................................................................................. 23
Overall takeaways
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OVERALL CONFERENCE TAKEAWAYS
With a range of visual storytelling innovations coming to market, all the way from AI-powered
multi-media slideshows to VR, we should remember: we are not in the photo business, we are
in the rich-media expression business. As at some point photos might no longer be the key
media type that consumers use to store or share their visual memories, our industry’s success
should not be dependent on photos alone. We should not replicate the mistakes railroads
made when failing to realize they were in the transportation business rather than the railroads
business.
Today, immediacy is one of the most important drivers of photo capture, creation and
sharing. Immediacy is key to spur-of-the-moment smartphone photo capture, anytime sharing,
real-time 360 photo stitching, smartphone-based photo and video editing, rich-media visual
story creation, and instantaneous print product ordering.
Photo and app engagement is key – from getting initial traction with your photo app all the
way to successfully monetizing your app through ads, in-app purchasing (IAP), brand
sponsorships or print products.
How to succeed
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HOW TO SUCCEED IN THE
PHOTO APP BUSINESS
Panelists
Bryan Mason, COO, VSCO
Wayne Liu, GM and VP of Bus. Development, Perfect Corp.
Kemal Ugur, Co-Founder & CEO, Funimate
Takeaways
What is success:
The definition of success depends on what stage your business is in – don’t think about it in
too narrow terms
o The first and foremost indicator of success is a healthy, engaged community of app
users: do downloaders actively use your app, do they give high ratings, do they
recommend your app, do they come back to your app on a regular basis?
o At a later stage other indicators become important as well, e.g. do you have a good
business model, are you successful with this business model, and are you successfully
scaling your business according to this model?
How to succeed
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How to become successful:
Getting off the ground all starts with a good app, but it also requires a combination of luck
and smart use of resources to jumpstart initial growth, such as by marketing your app to
customers from your legacy business or those of your partners, or by placing guerilla
marketing comments in other apps’ reviews to get noticed (as Funimate did). Spending
money to acquire new customers is not always an option, but it could work if it generates a
spike in store rankings, which in itself promotes your app (higher rankings lead to higher
visibility in the app store).
During the subsequent growth phase, viral growth through an active community is vital to
expand your user base. Each successful community has its own characteristics that draw
engagement. VSCO’s community stands out by its “no likes or comments” policy, which
appeals to users who’d like to freely express themselves by sharing their photos without
needing to worry about the feedback.
Once you have a large user base, monetization can take many shapes or forms, from
advertising, to print products, to IAP, to subscriptions, to AR links promoting consumer
brands (as is the case with Perfect Corp.’s virtual makeup apps).
Monetization requires a fine balance between optimizing revenues and promoting
continued usage and engagement with your app
Visual storytelling
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THE FUTURE OF VISUAL STORYTELLING
Panelists
Leonel Duarte, Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer, Storyo
Offir Gutelzon, Co-Founder & CEO, Keepy
Aymeric Vigneras, Co-Founder & CEO, Sharalike
Chris Yewdall, CEO, GenMe
Takeaways
After our industry solved the main challenges for consumers to aggregate their photos from
multiple devices, followed by image recognition and other image search solutions having
come to market that bring these photos to one’s fingertips (Mobile Photo Connect themes in
the last 3 years), currently our industry’s biggest challenge is to entice consumers to
actively engage with their photos and videos.
Rich-media visual storytelling tools are important creative vehicles for consumers to
engage with their photos, thus adding another layer of value to these photos and making
them more important in their users’ lives.
Visual storytelling can be done in many ways: from data-infused video trailers (Storyo), to
animated 3D slideshows (Sharalike), to inter-generational story feeds that include voice and
video commentary (Keepy).
Immediacy (creating and sharing visual stories in near real-time) boosts engagement,
whether it is through on-the-fly curated slideshows or instantly silhouetted headshots for
superimposing onto photos, videos, or games (GenMe).
The ease with which you can create media-rich visual stories not only lets you create
your stories faster, but it also helps to make them richer, more creative, and more
informative, e.g. when visual stories automatically incorporate publicly available content,
Visual storytelling
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such as maps, or user-specific content, such as the number of photos the user has taken
during a given trip (Storyo).
Videos are often the visual memories expression media format of choice, with photos in
many cases incorporated as the anchor points within these video narratives.
Engagement (and the opportunities for viral growth) is highest when multiple people give
feedback to or collaborate on the same visual stories (Keepy). When multiple people
contribute to the same visual stories, the visual story telling tool generates valuable auxiliary
data about these users, their preferences, and their relationships.
Photo engagement through feedback or multi-creator participation offers new ways to
identify photos that lend themselves particularly well for use in photo print products. This
offers opportunities for visual story telling solutions to smartly promote photo products. It also
works the other way: the intent to turn a photo story into a photobook or other photo product
also spurs more multi-user collaboration and engagement.
Rich-media stories are more typically shared with friends or family than published for
the entire world to see. While these stories might spur more engagement from friends or
family members than when sharing individual photos, rich-media stories have less viral
potential, as they are typically shared with smaller groups.
Visual story telling solutions that are able to attract loyal users have a range of monetization
opportunities, including subscription services, IAP sales, consumer brand sponsorships, and
licensing fees from device manufacturers, carriers or cloud providers.
Mobile output
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MONETIZING PHOTO APPS
THROUGH MOBILE OUTPUT
Panelists
Jim Dolce, VP Technology and Strategic Business Development, Fujifilm
Kartik Subramanian, Director Product & Program Management, Mobile Commerce,
Walgreens
Troy Sechrist, Head of Strategic Partnerships at HP Strategy and Emerging Business Group,
HP
Ralph Naruhn, CEO, di support
Takeaways
While printing photos – as individual prints or as photo products – is a use case still
applicable to smartphone photography, it is evolving along with consumers, as they change
the ways they engage with their smartphone photos. Relying on the same-old photo print use
cases that were applicable to digital camera photos – let alone to use cases that ruled the film
Mobile output
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camera days – misses out on the opportunities provided by today’s smartphone photo
engagement patterns.
Offering easy and efficient photo output ordering apps is a good first step, but offering
alluring print options when and where smartphone photographers are most engaged
with their photos is a second – and much harder – step to pull off in a compelling fashion.
After previous false starts in the early days of digital photography, at home – and even on
the go – photo printing is experiencing a revival, especially among teenagers who print
from their smartphones or inexpensive retro cameras (Fujifilm Instax cameras/printers; HP’s
recently announced Sprocket portable printer).
The photo print product industry needs to offer compelling photo products and smart
“anytime, anywhere” ordering methods to turn these new print-interested smartphone
photographers into purchasers of higher margin photo output products.
Offering photo print product options in apps in which consumers choose to engage with
their photos offers incremental monetization opportunities for these apps, as well as for the
photo print product providers.
The photo print industry is making big strides in offering smartphone photographers more
choice in what products to order and how or where to receive them, ranging from retail
chains with broad distribution networks (Walgreens), to retail plus central fulfillment (Fujifilm),
to multiple vendor fulfillment/retail solutions (di support), to home or on the go printing
products (HP).
With these print output options proliferating, photo app developers face the question of which
print API they should use or whether it’s worth the effort to implement multiple APIs. There is
an opportunity for umbrella print API solutions. (An OS-based universal print button that
includes multiple options similar to the universal Share button? Solutions offered by
middleware providers that integrate with multiple print APIs?)
User-generated VR
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THE NEXT BIG THING:
USER-GENERATED VR CONTENT
Panelists
Radu Rusu, Co-Founder & CEO, Fyusion, Inc
Mehrshad Mansouri, Dir. of Bus. Development & Partnerships, Software and Services,
GoPro
Paul T. Kim, Director of Content and Services, Samsung
Takeaways
Consumer user-generated VR is already becoming mainstream, indicated by the
massive growth in 360 videos being uploaded to 360-supporting sites, such as
YouTube. All major studios now create professional 360 content.
VR has use cases for virtually every major vertical. Journalism is a case in point, as
VR provides viewers a more complete (and in some ways more accurate)
representation of an event. For instance, political rallies might not be as large as they
appear in the media once you can view photos from all angles; viewing VR footage of
a Syrian refugee camp is much more immersive than viewing a 2D video.
There is no doubt that VR has taken off for real this time. As opposed to previous
efforts, currently a whole ecosystem is being built by major industry players and
innovative startups alike. This includes solutions for 360 capture, all the way from
regular smartphones with a free app (Fyuse) to $349 360 consumer cameras
(Samsung) to a $5K 6-camera rig (YouTube).
User-generated VR
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3D representation of objects will dramatically advance our understanding of
what is in the imagery and could be a big driver of smart AR solutions (Fyuse).
VR (and AR) will impact the entire imaging industry
From the moment photography was invented, there have been attempts to
incorporate 3D imagery, as that’s how humans experience the world. But the problem
has always been that we tried to display 3D visuals onto a 2D flat surface. When digital
technology arrived we still tried to display 3D into the confines of a square,
rectangular or whatever sized 2D digital page. Now, for the first time, 3D is accessed
in an immersive and interactive environment – 3D of natural imagery, as used in VR,
is one the most significant developments that will impact the imaging industry
for years to come.
Our children might look back at today’s 2D digital photos and wonder, “How bland, is
that what you did with your visual memories in the old days?” – the same way today’s
youngsters might compare how they engage with their photos on a daily basis,
comparing this to the old days when boxes filled with analog photos collected dust in
the hallway closets.
Facebook’s Eric Cheng
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FIRESIDE CHAT: A CONVERSATION WITH
FACEBOOK’S HEAD OF
IMMERSIVE MEDIA, ERIC CHENG
Pushing the photo and video boundaries
Takeaways
There are no signs that drone innovation is slowing down. Drones are increasingly
becoming commoditized with tight integration of the hardware components, which
enables consumer drones to become smaller, lighter and most recently even foldable
– without compromising the camera functionality.
Light field photography technology has had a few false starts in the past in how this
technology was being productized, but the latest direction that a company like Lytro
has taken – developing high-end solutions for cinematic and immersive VR – appears
to smartly leverage light field technology for important new use cases.
VR is going to be real this time, with many companies – including some very large
ones – committed to developing an entire ecosystem, with a widely held belief that
no single vendor can do it alone without cross-company partnerships.
Facebook is active in all aspects of this emerging VR ecosystem. Its commitment to VR
stems from the notion that VR is really about connecting people in a deeper way –
Facebook’s overall mission.
How to get covered
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FIRESIDE CHAT: A CONVERSATION WITH
HAJE KAMPS AND JACKIE DOVE
How to get your photo app covered by the major hi-tech sites –
Haje Kamps, Writer, TechCrunch
Jackie Dove, Writer for various tech blogs
Takeaways
We all know it, but it can’t be stressed enough: popular hi-tech journalists get
hundreds of pitch emails a day, and are charged to write more stories and write them
faster than ever before. Don’t waste their time!
Successful PR starts with understanding the journalists’ needs. Pitching your own
message with content and in a format that serves your own needs without keeping the
journalists’ needs in mind is not only fruitless but also counter productive.
Different journalists might have different needs based on their interests, their
publication’s requirements and the type of articles they are charged to write (e.g.
news articles, reviews, or trend pieces). Your pitch is going to be most successful if
you target it towards their specific needs.
More of Haje’s and Jackie’s practical tips to get covered by the major hi-tech sites
are described here and here.
Mobile Photo Connect Awards
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THE MOBILE PHOTO CONNECT AWARDS
Panelists
James Joaquin,Co-founder and Managing Director, Obvious Ventures
Jackie Dove, Writer and editor, various tech blogs
Haje Jan Kamps, Writer, TechCrunch
Rudy Burger, Managing Partner, Woodside Capital
Judges comments
Best of Show Award: Funimate
“We unanimously loved everything about Funimate. As a small, scrappy international
team they are building super computer capabilities right into your smartphone. With
a consumer experience so fun and addictive, it might just take the global tween and
teen market by storm. And we think they might build a big business along the way
too!
So it is time to throw out your Final Cut Pro workstations and After Effects renderings
and just have fun with music and video.”
Mobile Photo Connect Awards
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Best Business Potential Award: Beamr
“Beamr’s technology will instantly save companies bandwidth and money, while
giving consumers a faster imaging experience. These guys prove that size matters but
quality matters more!”
Best Technology Award: Regaind
“Regaind combines natural language conversation with machine vision analysis, and
dared to even demo their latest technology fresh from their compiler!”
Special Recognition Award: Keepy
“Keepy offers an innovative way for families to build relationships and the memories
around these relationships. It targets different kinds of memories than we normally
associate with simple photographs. Thanks to a great freemium pricing plan and
business model, Keepy has a shot at being around for many years to come.”
Show & Tell
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SHOW & TELL PRESENTATIONS
Athentech, Brad Malcolm
Beamr, Eli Lubitch
di support, Adam Czajka
FotoFlipz, Rodney Van Johnson
FotoSwipe, Sylvain Dufour
Fripito, Jan Brezina
Fujifilm, Ryan Moore
Funimate, Kemal Ugur
GenMe, Chris Yewdall
HP, David Parry
Keepy, Offir Gutelzon
MEA Mobile, Bruce Seymour
nventify, Jack Levine
PastBook, Stefano Cutello
PhotoGurus, Laurent Martin
Show & Tell
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Pic: Mobile, Brett Rounsaville
PicCollage, Jon Fan
PicsArt, Argam DerHartunian
Rainhut, Lani Adamson
Regaind, Arnaud Laurenty
SanDisk, Aran Ziv
Sharalike, Etienne Leroy
Storyo, Inês Mateus
Streetography, Mike Lanza
Timebox, Len Kawell
Upthere, Brandi Kolmer
Vicman, Victor Sazhin
Vuze, Jim Malcolm
Walgreens, Drew Schweinfurth
Younity, Erik Caso
Zebra Instant, Anton Pereiaslavtsev
For company links, LinkedIn addresses of the presenters and their photos:
http://www.mobilephotoconnect.com/show-tell
Sponsor contacts
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SPONSOR CONTACTS
Walgreens: Drew Schweinfurth
HP: Julie Anderson
Fujifilm: Ryan Moore
di support: Ralph Narun
Storyo: Filipe Vasconcellos
Sponsor contacts
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SanDisk: Aran Ziv
Printicular: Bruce Seymour
JPEGmini: Eli Lubitch
Sharalike: Aymeric Vigneras
RPI: Rick Hanaway
Perfectly Clear: Brad Malcolm
Imagizer: Gary Gaessler
Photo Gurus: Laurent Martin
Vuze: Jim Malcolm
FotoFlipz: Rodney Van Johnson
Zebra Instant: Anton Pereiaslavtsev
Vicman: Victor Sazhin
Attending companies
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ATTENDING COMPANIES
Albumprinter B.V.
Amazon
Apple
Artifact Uprising
Artimage
Beamr
BigDot Photo Products
Blurb
Canon
CaptureLife
Carnival
CDN Networks
CEWE
Circle Graphics
Clearstory
CliqPass
ColorCentric Corp.
Costco
di support
Diagramics
DNP Imaging Communications
Eversnap
F/22 Consulting
FotoFlipz
FotoSwipe, Inc.
Fripito
Fujifilm Imaging Germany
Fujifilm North America Corp.
Funimate
Fyusion, Inc.
GenMe
Global Media Group
Gooten, Inc.
GoPro
Graava, Inc.
HP
Huawei
Attending companies
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Humaneyes Technologies Ltd.
Illuminate Education
Imgur
ip.labs
IPI Member Network
Keepy
Kite.ly
Kodak Alaris
Koelnmesse
Les Pros De La Photo
Lifepics
Lifetouch
MailPix.com
Manfrotto
MEA Mobile
Mediaclip Inc.
Mikkel Aaland
Mission: Pic
Mixbook
mPerpetuo, Inc.
Nationwide Studios
Northwest Framing
Nventify
Obvious Ventures
olloclip
Orange
Parabo Press
PastBook
Perfect Corp.
Perfectly Clear by Athentech Imaging
Photo Finale
Photo Presse
PhotoGurus
PhotoLynx, Inc.
Photomyne
Pic Collage
PicsArt
piv
PNI Media
Profoto
Pwinty
Rainhut Inc.
RealNetworks
Regaind
Attending companies
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RPI
Samsung
SanDisk
Sharalike
Shutterfly
Shutterstock
Snapfish
Sprint
SpyHop
Storyglory
Storyo
Streetography
Sworl
Taopix Ltd
TechCrunch
Timebox
Upthere
VangoArt
VicMan
VSCO
Walgreens
WHCC
WhiteWall
Woodside Capital
Yahoo / Flickr
YesVideo, Inc.
Younity
Zebra Instant
Resources
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RESOURCES
Visual impressions
Press coverage and partner announcements
Attendee apps video trailers, including:
Athentech
Beamr
CliqPass
di support
FotoSwipe
Fripito
Fyuse
Graava
Imagizer
ip.labs
Keepy
Lifepics
Mission: Pic
Pastbook
Perfectly Clear
Photo Lab
PhotoGurus
PicCollage
PicsArt
Rainhut
RPI
SanDisk
Sharalike
SpyHop
Storyglory
Storyo
Streetography
Timebox
UPix
Upthere
Vuze
Walgreens
Younity
Zebra Instant
Contact: [email protected]
Resources
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