Privately-backed Touchnote, the startup which enables you to create a kind of postcard which stands up from any photo, is going all Web 2.0 on us. It’s launched an API that enables any third party website with visual content (photos, drawings, cartoons…) to enable their users to turn the images into Touchnote cards. This generates a ‘create a card’ widget/button on a partner site with the image dropped directly into Touchnote’s Flash card personaliser. I have to say, as well as providing another revenue share model for social sites with images, it beats the crap out of traditional card companies like Moonpig in the UK, plus they don’t have any annoying TV adverts.
And the site now seamlessly integrates with albums on Facebook and Picasa. The startup address a pretty simple market need – can you see photos when the computer is switched off, and what about older generations who don’t habitually have Facebook open? The product design allows the card to stand up so people keep them up longer than a traditional greeting card. Cards are green with 50% recycled card and their printers are about to become FSC certified. Speech bubbles and captions, write a message and then have it posted nationally or internationally. Customers can also get the card to for hand-signing if they want or use a gallery of images if they don’t have their own photo.
Some other bells and whistles they are adding include the ability to create a Touchnote from a special effect-manipulated image on Photofunia. Partner sites are also getting royalty for every card printed with one of their images, along with branding on the inside of the card – something which could be of interest to any web app out there that wants to monetise its visual content outside of T-shirts and mugs. Other partners to date include Someoneoncetoldme.com and FACEinHOLE.
Touchnote is seeing a lift in traffic from these partnerships and international orders now make up 20% of orders. With a small team which includes people from Skype, BSkyB, Expedia, WishingWell.com among others, Touchnote, which launched in November last year, counts Simon Murdoch (Friends Abroad, Bookpages/Amazon Europe) among it’s advisors.