Aviary is announcing today that it’s hit a big milestone in the use of its photo editing platform — that platform has been used to edit 10 billion photos.
And it seems that most of that activity happened in the past year, since Aviary made its 3 billion photo announcement in March of 2013.
The company offers its own, Aviary-branded apps, but it’s probably best known as a tool for developers — the company says that by using its software development kit, developers can add photo-editing capabilities to their app or websites within minutes.
In fact, the company says that it’s now been integrated with more than 7,000 partner apps, including Pic Stitch, Tango, and Squarespace. It also says the SDK has been downloaded in 143 countries.
Across all of those apps, Aviary says it reaches more than 70 million monthly active users (a number that it has shared before). It’s hard to do an apples-to-apples comparison, since Aviary isn’t just a consumer photo app, but as a reminder, Instagram has said that it has 150 million monthly actives.
The company blog post says:
As we look forward, what most exciting is the fact that a new visual lingua franca has emerged. Unquestionably, photos have become the communication language of the global mobile generation. We are long past the point when photo editing was just about turning an average picture into a good one. Photo editing is now about enhancing visual communication between billions of people across the planet, in a way that embodies the full richness of emotions, feelings and inspiration.
By the way, a regulatory filing at the end of last year suggested that Aviary had raised a $2 million debt round. When I asked CEO Tobias Peggs about it, he told me via email:
In short, having turned on b2c and b2b revenue last year, the company is in a really, really good spot. But we wanted to accelerate a couple of initiatives early this year (specially international expansion and our Branded Content model), so it was helpful to have a little more firepower. To do that, we raised a quick debt round from existing investors. It’s pretty normal, and fast – which is important, because fundraising can be a major distraction and we have a lot to get on with. It’s great to have a board who understands that. It was the best solution all round.