Back in April I wrote about Mobicious, a Needham, MA, startup that once focused on publishing a directory of mobile applications but took a dramatic turn in direction by launching a free, advertising-supported photo-sharing community called SnapMyLife that’s optimized for mobile phones, especially the Apple iPhone. After just eight months, SnapMyLife has signed up more than 500,000 users, and today Mobicious announced that it has raised $5 million in new funding for the project.
Existing investors North Bridge Venture Partners and Carmel Ventures put up the new funds, which bring Mobicious’ total venture financing to $9 million. Mobicious said it will use the money to add new features to SnapMyLife, market the service to more users in other countries, and pursue international partnerships.
“SnapMyLife is the first mobile-oriented service to allow a wide range of consumers to easily share photos, while building a global community of friends,” Mobicious founder and CEO George Grey said in a statement. “SnapMyLife’s premium demographic, high quality content, and location-based services set us apart and offer advertisers a unique opportunity to reach older and more affluent consumers.”
SnapMyLife can be accessed via a Web browser on a mobile phone or via a specialized iPhone application that the company released in July. The application lets users take pictures, upload them to online photo albums, and see the locations where the photos were taken displayed on a map. Users can also easily browse photos that were taken near their current location or uploaded by friends, as well as comment on other users’ images. The service is supported by small text ads that appear at the bottom of most photo pages.
“We expect SnapMyLife to do well in the current climate,” Rina Shainski, general partner at Carmel Ventures, said in the company’s funding announcement. SnapMyLife has “a strong management team and a compelling service that provides advertisers with high quality, targeted content and users,” Shainski said.
