Thinglink

ThingLink Oy
Private
Industry Internet Technology
Founded 2010
Headquarters Helsinki, Finland
Key people
 Ulla Engeström, CEO, Janne Jalkanen CTO
Products Rich Media Tag
Number of employees
 14 (2011)
Website www.thinglink.com

ThingLink Inc. (Thinglink Oy in Finland) is a Finnish-American provider of in-image interaction tools.

ThingLink, launched in 2010 and led by Ulla Engeström and Janne Jalkanen, develops tools for image interaction that allow content sharing via online images. The purpose of ThingLink, according to its developers, is to allow photos and other images to be made into web links, mainly for the purpose of advertising and education.

Company history

ThingLink was developed by Social Objects Oy (a Helsinki-based incubator owned by Ulla and Jyri Engeström) in 2006. ThingLink was first incorporated in Palo Alto, California in 2008 by Ulla Engeström. A closed test version of the service was launched in 2009, followed by the public release in 2010. Thinglink Oy did initial fundraising and found financial backers in Helsinki. In 2011, ThingLink launched Rich Media Tags, an initial form for linking images to websites and social media. Rich Media Tags have so far been developed for several social content platforms, including Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Spotify, Vimeo, Wikipedia, SoundCloud Google Apps and Twitter.

ThingLink and SoundCloud launched the first use of a sound/music player inside a digital image.

Atlantic Records launched Simple Plan's Get Your Heart On CD using ThingLink, the first major record company to tap into the engagement potential of interactive images.

ThingLink hired Neil Vineberg, former head of Vineberg Communications, as CMO, to open up U.S. market to relationships with key companies in music, entertainment, publishing and digital marketing.

Rich Media Tags

In 2011 ThingLink launched Rich Media Tags, making interacting with different social content platforms possible within a single image.

When linked with a URL to one of the rich media enabled sites, a tag appears revealing the related content. These tags will then be revealed every time a viewer scrolls their mouse over the uploaded image. By using ThingLink, publishers can also include links to other social networks, blogs, news and commerce sites that are yet to have Rich Media Tags created.

References

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/13/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.