ThingLink

ThingLink LLC (Thinglink Oy in Finland) is a Finnish-American provider of in-image interaction tools. ThingLink is helping define pop culture with a transformational, engaging, adoptable, and viral media/content serving format.

ThingLink, launched in 2008 and led by Ulla Engeström and Janne Jalkanen, develops tools for image interaction that allow content sharing via online images. ThingLink technology changes how people engage with photos by transforming them from a static image, into a navigational surface for exploring rich, relevant content that enhances the viewer’s knowledge and experience. Brands, publishers and bloggers utilize ThingLink in their images to share links, drive traffic, and set up image-based advertising campaigns.

Company History

2005: Founder Ulla Engeström met with Jimmy Wales

Jimmy Wales

Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales is an American Internet entrepreneur best known as a co-founder and promoter of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia and the Wikia company....

, the founder of Wikipedia

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...

 at Reboot Conference in Copenhagen, and discussed a new standard for identifying both virtual and physical objects and linking them to information on the Internet.

2006: Social Objects Oy, a Helsinki-based incubator owned by Ulla and Jyri Engeström, started developing ThingLink as a global unique identifier for the long tail

Long tail

Long tail may refer to:*The Long Tail, a consumer demographic in business*Power law's long tail, a statistics term describing certain kinds of distribution*Long-tail boat, a type of watercraft native to Southeast Asia...

market. Unique identifiers are seen as a technological pre-requisite for enabling object navigation.

2007: With a supporting grant from the Finnish Technology Agency (TEKES), Social Objects Oy continued to develop and test various user scenarios for object navigation on the web and via mobile phones, including NFC.

2008: ThingLink LLC was founded in Palo Alto, California.

2009: ThingLink launched a Private Beta version of the service that enables consumers, designers, and brands to identify and converse around products.

2010: ThingLink launched a public version of the service that enables everyone to navigate through objects in images, and to share those images with their social network. Thinglink Oy raises a seed-financing round.

2011: ThingLink launched Rich Media Tags, an innovative new product that enables anyone to add the content and functionality of other websites and social platforms directly into their images. Rich Media Tags have so far been developed for some of the world’s leading social content platforms, including Facebook

Facebook

Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...

, YouTube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

, Flickr

Flickr

Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community that was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to...

, Spotify

Spotify

Spotify is a Swedish-founded, UK-headquartered DRM-based music streaming service offering streaming of selected music from a range of major and independent record labels, including Sony, EMI, Warner Music Group, and Universal. Launched in October 2008 by Swedish startup Spotify AB, the service had...

, Vimeo

Vimeo

Vimeo is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos. It was founded by Zach Klein and Jake Lodwick in November 2004...

, Wikipedia

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...

, SoundCloud

SoundCloud

SoundCloud is an online audio distribution platform which allows collaboration, promotion and distribution of audio recordings.-History:SoundCloud was originally started in Stockholm, Sweden, but was established in Berlin, Germany in August, 2007 by sound designer Alex Ljung and artist Eric Wahlforss...

 and Twitter

Twitter

Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...

.

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

Atlantic Records

Atlantic Records

Atlantic Records is an American record label best known for its many recordings of rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and jazz...

 launched Simple Plan

Simple Plan

Simple Plan is a Canadian pop punk band from Montréal, Québec. The band has had no line up changes since its inception in 1999. Members are Pierre Bouvier , Jeff Stinco , Sébastien Lefebvre , David Desrosiers and Chuck Comeau...

'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 2010 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.