Cooliris launches BeamIt worldwide to give photo sharing a rich experience

With 1.8 billion photos being shared daily according to the 2014 KPCB Internet Trends by Mary Meeker, photos have now become a main medium of communication. Mobile and wearable cameras are capturing pixels at an unprecedented rate. Yet, today’s sharing functionality in messaging apps is inflexible, bland and bloated with inefficiencies. Photos are treated as isolated attachments instead of being part of a coherent story.

Cooliris has launched a new mobile app – BeamIt that comes along with a service that blends into a powerful private messaging with an unparalleled photo experience, introducing a new generation of visual messaging.

Cooliris is the leader in creating the world’s most beautiful messaging and media experiences for mobile and web consumers. Their earlier app - Gallery is a top 10 mobile app in the U.S., as measured by comScore. The app satisfies the unmet and accelerating need where users seek more privacy and control for their communication and media, without sacrificing its quality.

The team of 16 collaborators is headquartered in San Francisco, with passionate users around the world. Cooliris is venture backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, DAG Ventures, The Westly Group, T-Venture and DOCOMO Capital.

Cooliris is based in San Francisco venture backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, DAG Ventures, The Westly Group, T-Venture and DOCOMO Capital. Cooliris products and services include Android Gallery, LiveShare, Cooliris 3D wall and AdJitsu . AdJitsu was acquired by Amobee (which SingTel had acquired for $321M).

Furthermore, the user has complete control with a unique 'unsend' feature, which lets the sender delete their content from the entire group. Finally, BeamIt features offline support for composing and curating, so users can interact with their groups, as well as share the media without incurring data usage costs or roaming charges. They have first launched iOS app and would be soon coming up with their android app.BeamIt seamlessly integrates photos and text in a stunning user experience and introduces powerful features new to the messaging world. With Photo DrawersTM, users can easily share hundreds of photos at once, all in full resolution, without interrupting the flow of the conversation. BeamIt also enables users to simultaneously and privately share to separate groups or people at the same time – saving the sender the pain of having to separately compose the same message multiple times.

Stressing the need for disruption in messaging, Soujanya Bhumkar, Cooliris CEO and Co-founder says,

Messaging apps evolved from just text, then added photos, and then came an influx of superfluous features, which pollute the core communication experience. We built BeamIt by intersecting stunning product design with engineering excellence. Every pixel was designed from the ground up and every interaction was challenged to deliver a unique ability to consumers and enterprises to share media-rich experiences inside the messaging container.

BeamIt leverages two key technologies invented and patented by Cooliris. One is a new layout engine on the client side and the other is a real-time database on the backend. The combination of these innovations makes it possible to have Photo DrawersTM for efficient navigation, provide full control to users for maintaining privacy, and offer offline support to consumers for saving money.

With a freemium business model in place, BeamIt is an advertising-free experience. Premium in-app purchases are scheduled to appear in subsequent versions, with the free baseline experience always remaining stellar. The app is designed for instant gratification of consumer-to-consumer use cases, while elegantly adapting to enterprise-to-consumer interactions and communications.

The rising popularity of photo sharing services- which allow users to take, share and comment on photos in real time- has been extraordinary. The rise in the use of smartphones has led to a rise in demand for photo sharing online and, thanks to platforms such as Instagram and Whatsapp, it is emerging as a new form of social networking in its own right. Dating app Tinder has introduced a photo sharing feature called Moments to encourage people to use it for more than just hooking up.

Its a great opportunity to build social network around photo sharing something which Instagram, Snapchat and Whatsapp have been trying to build around, Cooliris's BeamIt wants to exactly tap into this market.

Do you feel secured enough to share photos via messaging apps?