Apoorva Ruparel, Co founder and VP Marketing & Strategy photoWall

PhotoWall –the only real-time photo application

The future of mobile phone software and technology has always walked hand in glove with the preferences of the end user. It’s no wonder then that with the proliferation and phenomenal fan following of social networks, someone would make software that focuses on a fundamental element of social networks aka the omnipresent “photo”. “PhotoWall” is an application which takes the concept of posting photos on our Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr profiles and enhances the entire experience.The success of the application is a result of the work and entrepreneurial vigor of Apoorva Ruparel, Keshav Murthy and Philip Easter who are the founders of a 11-month-old Colorado-Bangalore start up by the name of AirMe. Since their application “PhotoWall” was launched on the iPhone it has been downloaded more than 42,000 times in 56 countries. The secret to their success is so simple and obvious that it is pure genius.

PhotoWall has exploited the trinity of social media, real-time web applications, and mobile devices to create an application that functions in “real time”. The term “real time” refers to actual loading onto the site that is done immediately with the photo that you click on your mobile showing up on all four sites (PhotoWall, Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr) within seconds of taking them.

Apoorva is the technical expert among the entrepreneurial founders of the company with 9+ years of experience in IT, Telecommunication and Networking Industries. He explained how PW has an edge over traditional photo loading onto sites saying “PhotoWall users can not only click a picture and tag it with their comments in text, but can also choose to add a seven second voice tag, describing their click in their own voice”

He added that India with its 27 million active GSM users is "one of the most lucrative mobile markets because of its sheer size, population and consistent increase in the average disposable income".

PhotoWall is a free downloadable application available for iPhone, Sony Ericson, Nokia, Windows mobile and Palm Pre users in foreign countries. Android and Blackberry versions are also on the drawing board. They also told us how the application is being tested in anticipation of an increase in usage and interest in India. The other interesting feature of this application is that alongwith the photo you can have a voice tag an innovation sure to appeal the end users.

"PhotoWall has been field tested successfully in India on low end phones and our media upload performances have been benchmarked in low speed 2G networks. PhotoWall's quality control process does not allow any inappropriate content to be shared".

For those who are afraid that the free software comes with a catch, Apoorva assure us there are no hidden obligations. Their ads will also be non-intrusive and only show when the application is in use guaranteeing a spam free user experience.

“We have developed an advertising platform, which will integrate commercial ads with the application,” says Apoorva promising to keep PhotoWall a clutter free application.

The Airme team has struck gold with Microsoft who saw the potential in the prototype of the service and wanted a quick launch. To counter the infrastructure and future scalability demands they used Amazon Web Services (AWS) to speed up their launch dates.

Phil Easter, Co-Founder of AirMe, spoke of the merits of their decision saying, “Amazon Web Services allowed us to create a dynamic, highly scalable ecosystem that would be difficult to duplicate in a traditional server farm, co-location premise. AWS has unique technologies like SQS and EBS that allowed us to architect a new mobile media mash up platform. Add in, auto scaling and load balancing with a CDN…this is not your father’s data center!”

PhotoWall is currently partnering with MSN (India) and has a co-branded site http://msn.photowall.com. Besides that Airme is also being represented by MSN India who is its sales and marketing partner for their PhotoWall application.

Sanjay Trehan, Head of MSN India’s Consumer & Online Business believes that their collaborative effort will be mutually beneficial and is a sign of things to come saying, “In today’s ever connected world, PhotoWall is a powerful new medium to communicate and stay updated. Its ability to leverage the ubiquity of photographs is amazing, and we are excited about the new horizons it opens up for consumers,”

Apoorva who is also the VP of strategy & marketing explained that the tie up with Microsoft was essential to bringing brand recognition to PhotoWall. He says “We have released APIs through which the brands will be able to pull the pictures to their website as well. An example of this is photowall.com/kfw which is the entire Kolkata fashion week on the wall.”

If their results worldwide are anything to go by, PhotoWall seems to be the new go to application for all the Social Network enthusiasts in India. For any individual looking for a better end user feel to their mobile applications or immediate uploads of your jaunts, We at Yourstory recommend PhotoWall with two thumbs up.