When I was looking at traffic numbers for the top photo sites this weekend, another stat caught my eye. Online photo editing site Picnik is also quickly climbing the ranks of photo sites from seemingly nowhere.
In January, according to comScore, the site attracted 6.6 million unique visitors worldwide, a tenfold increase from the year before. On comScore’s list of the largest photo sites, Picnik ranks No. 14, above Shutterfly and AOL Pictures, and just below Snapfish. Unlike those services, however, Picnik is not really a place people store their photos. Rather, it is a place where they touch them up and manipulate them before they post them on MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, Smugmug, or somewhere else.
Picnik is a powerful, cloud-based photo editor that is integrated directly into Flickr, SmugMug and other photo repositories. Competing online photo editors such as Fotoflexer and Photoshop.com (formerly and Photoshop Express) attract only a fraction as many users (1.4 million uniques for Fotoflexer and 760,000 for Photoshop.com.
I asked CEO Jonathon Sposato for more details. He offered that 45 million photos were uploaded in January, and that 45 percent of Picnik’s traffic is direct, 28 percent comes from search engine, and that only 18 percent comes from partner sites such as Flickr and Smugmug. Picnik offers a base version of its photo editor for free, and then tries to convert power users into paying a subscription for more features. While Sposato won’t get into the conversion rate of free to paid members, he says that the percentage is increasing, renewals are increasing as a percentage, and he says that Picnik is now cashflow positive, a little more than two years after launch.
Fuck you techcrunch. You have lost a reader here for not retracting that bullshit story. And you are losing tons by the second.
FUCK OFF!
http://search.t...ch?q=techcrunch
Wah.
@Cussing. Off topic.
@Erick, great post. I use picnik regularly.
Does Arrington or TC have a stake in these guys? His team only pumps guys that he has benefited from. TC is HORRIBLE (perhaps illegaly so?) at disclosure.
I too am waiting for a retraction. I am thoroughly disappointed.
The funniest part about that is that Schoenfeld uses journalistic cover when it suits him, a la, “I emailed for a response,” yet when the chips fall on the wrong side he’ll just say, “whatev’, it’s just a blog.” Irresponsible.
AOL Pictures and FotoFlexer are the best photo sharing sites you could find for that second graph?
Swapped it for a better one.
Defamation!
That’s illegal you know!
FYI to others, it’s a bit down on the page now, but this is the story being bandied about:
http://www.tech...ta-to-the-riaa/
Ohhhhh, “cloud-based”
What baffles me about this article is that the traffic numbers are incorrect. There’s no mention of network traffic. If you look at network traffic, Fotoflexer has the same if not more than Picnik.
It is an apples to apples comparison.
I’m glad to see from the comments that I’m not the only person upset over Erick’s hackjob on last.fm. I’m wondering what it’s gonna take for TC to put out a retraction.
I guess I don’t know the details, but why should they?
They had an inside source, so they posted an article, they correctly said it was just a rumor, and posted all the responses and corrections.
People having so much umbrage for a little post on a tech blog. Some people need to calm down.
What was done was highly, highly irresponsible. For a blog which hopes to foster new technology, and web companies, they have demonstrated the ability to harm them just as much, if not more so.
Ars Technica took the time to find out the truth – TC did not. The article should never have been published in the first place.
Calling it a rumor means nothing. It was good enough for many users to proclaim they would be deleting their accounts. I refuse to believe that either TC, or Erick, did not understand what the consequences of their actions might be.
Web companies hope to be covered by TechCrunch – they’re not supposed to be afraid of just that.
The article was reckless and damaging. I have always supported TechCrunch through all the BS people throw at them, but this inexcusable if no apology and retraction is posted.
Aside from any legal problems that may ensue, TC writers might (re-) watch the movie “Sweet Smell of Success.” There are some germane lessons there.
Are you serious? This blog posts a libelous rumor based on some anonymous (and seemingly fictitious) tipster, people who don’t know TC’s reputation take it as truth, delete their accounts, digg the article to Digg’s main page, etc., and you don’t see a reason for them to retract or correct their untrue reporting, even as Last.fm and the RIAA have both said they have no idea what TC is talking about?
Really?
TC didn’t have an “inside source”. They had an anonymous tipster, and they didn’t fact check before publishing. When TC slanders your online company with a rumor that gets picked up across the Internet, we’ll see if you just “calm down”.
im with you Jack. TC did a bad bad think. this blog has zero credibility now.
The site name is so catchy, PICNIK . I love it.
start of the end for tc
I’m outraged (well, upset is probably a better word) about their treatment of Last.fm.
But I’ll stay on topic. I love Picnik and Fotoflexor – they handle 70% of all my picture editing needs.
Oops, someone needs a fact-check. Suggestion, use Quantcast because their data is measured directly from the site. You’ll find the following data for the Picnik and the FotoFlexer networks:
FotoFlexer
3.8MM US people
5.6MM Global people
Picnik
2.2MM US people
5.7MM Global people
Glad to hear that Picnik has caught-up and is now cashflow positive. It’s difficult to monetize that international traffic.
Quantcast reveals most of FotoFlexer’s traffic is coming from it’s “network” — ie, hard to monetize widgets that sit on sites other people control.
By contrast, most of picnik’s traffic is coming to it’s destination site, which is much easier to monetize.
Fotoflexer
544k destination uniques
Picnik
5.4M destination uniques
Fotoflexer has approximately 10% of the destination traffic Picnik does, so Techcrunch is entirely accurate.
You make too many assumptions regarding “network” and monetization…
The complete network figures, as reported by Quantcast are most relevant.
Facts dont get in the way for TC. Never did, why now?
It’s difficult to monetize international traffic thru serving ads, but Picnik is a premium subscription model and they usually work just fine internationally, often even better than in the US. The fact that I’m an Australian Picnik user doesn’t change whether I want to be a premium subscriber (though varying the price point and offering billing in local currency would be great)
That’s b/c Picnik must not sell many “Premium” memberships. Remember when Picnik went all- premium and then backtracked a few weeks later?
Also, why say Picnik is cash flow positive? If the company is profitable than say that. If not, then say that. PR flacks and shading the truth…UGH.
cash flow positive means more money is flowing in than out. Profitable means getting returns on investment. You have to hit your break even point before you’re profitable.
Give Picnik’s Firefox plug-in a try. Makes the process of screen grabs way more efficient – whether in a specific area or an entire site page.
It is pretty much the one reason I fire up FF these days instead of Chrome
id take this article with a pinch of salt. you can believe anything written on this blog any more. i would not be surprised of erik made the chart himself with excel. hey erik do you have a financial interest in Picnik?
Er, colour me confused… Picnik doesn’t appear to be a photo *site* so much as a photo editing application online… or am I missing something here?
“cloud-based”… the term is as pointless as “web 2.0″, isn’t every startup covered here cloud-based?
WTF is all this bitching about last.fm?
Anyway, on topic… I use Picnik (via Flickr) for quick fixes to my auto-upped iPhone shots. It’s awesome.
Are these stats counting each edit through Flickr as a unique? If so, do they count each edit through the main site as a unique as well?
The bitching is because this story was written by the same guy that pushed a scurrilous and flimsy rumor on a Friday night.
Ya… I recognize that.
I mean, why comment here?
Remain germane.
Hey Erick, are you sure you didn’t just make these stats up?
Given your penchant for posting complete crap that you’ve made up (ie, the last.fm/RIAA “rumor” you invented over the weekend to garner some cheap traffic)… it is fair to question everything you post — and TechCrunch posts — going forward until you post an apology and a retraction.
I love Picnik – I still find it hard to believe it’s not a desktop app
Long live Erick Schonfeld. Keep sticking it to the man bro.
I have used Picnik and I love it! Its such an easy and quick way of editing. I use it for profile pictures, where I can put little add-ons. It’s mostly being used by those who loves to edit, and don’t know/own Adobe. I’m not sure how accurate that graph is, but it sure is addicting!