For bloggers and writers, finding high-quality, licensed, free images is often difficult, especially when you are pressed for time. PicApp has made life much easier for bloggers today with the enabling of its embed code on WordPress.com’s blogging platform. PicApp’s site has close to 20 million high-quality, legal and free images that are sources from partners including Getty Images, Corbis, Newscom, Splash News, Image Source, Jupiter Images and Pacific Coast News.
Similar to YouTube’s videos, PicApp lets anyone publishers to easily search and insert images into posts via an embed code. When the image is published, PicApp will feature a strip of related thumbnail images within the image. When you click on any of these, you are taken to PicApp’s site, where the images are hosted.
The startup also lets blogs link images to a branded or private label image search sites, where PicApp serves ads and shares revenue with content partners. Here’s an example from BlogHer.
Some of the actual content on PicApp is hit or miss. If you do a search for “Carol Bartz,” there are a few high-quality pics that are usable. But if you search for “iPod,” you are given 1,817 images to sift through and the first images that popped up in the results were of Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise running in a park. A a blogger, I don’t have time to comb through nearly 2,000 images. That being said, all of the images on PicApp are quality, high-resolution and free to use. It seems as if the more specific you are in your search, the better the result will be. PicApp received $3.2 million in Series A funding last fall from Carmel Ventures.
Here’s an example of an embedded image:
That strip of pics of questionable relevance is a deal breaker for me. Will stick to Flickr CC and morguefile.
Having worked extensively with PicApp in the past (we used them at b5 and then dumped them), I’m actually saddened by this. The leading player in the industry, quality-wise, is http://www.fotoglif.com (particularly for sports/fashion/celeb/news photos).
And they’re Canadian to boot
I have worked with @PicApp (www.picapp.com) for the last two years, and this time their powerful launch with wordpress.com is nothing to compare with any other photo sharing site. I am absolutely inlove with their new site and glad for their serious attention to our feedback over the last few months.
They still haven’t fully fixed their licensing terms – blogger is still liable to police their own syndication.
I used them and they have a great library of images, I don’t think anyone else comes close.
They have nice pictures of Michael which I haven’t seen before.
Do the have api you can use for other applications than wordpress? I’m hosting non wp blogs on my site and it would be cool if the users could use picapp for their blogs without leaving the site..
yes we do!
please email directly to discover [at] picapp [dot] com
piccapp gave me freebies once so I think they are ace
I also tried PicApp but i don’t like the advertisement below the pictures. I rather pay $1 for a photo and then i can use it anywhere on my blog/website/prints. Thats one of the reason i have created the first microstock plugin for Wordpress with which you can add relevant photos to your blog posts without leaving Wordpress.
You can turn on the affiliate option to start earning money from links on your photos, too.
I think free pictures are not the future for professional bloggers.
Amos,
Thanks for the feedback BUT—- we don’t have ads running under the images!
Our publishers didn’t want intrusive ads appearing below/on the images so we created a better product to fit their needs- we show related thumbnail images and thus give readers add’l opp to get engages with images and post content.
And– Picapp has a wordpress plug-in the lets you embed premium images straight from your WP editor.
The way we see it- professional bloggers, like mainstream journalists, want access to premium, legal images that are fresh and updated.
A smarter solution is to provide them with free images while finding a mechanism to monetize image usage, so content owners and photographers have a monitored distribution channel, they are paid and acknowleged for their valueable images while bloggers get access to images at no cost.
And that what Picapp is all about.
PIcApp has worked well for us by providing a single, simple source for a large library of high-quality and legal photos. Given the diverse interests and skills of the BlogHer community, the PicApp tool can give everyone what they want, when they want it.
I find a great app!