An Easy Way to Share iPhone Photos Online

Picplz, a low-profile photo sharing start-up from the founders of Imeem, expanded its reach Monday with the introduction of an iPhone app.

Picplz is like a visual Twitter. People can post cellphone photos that are tagged with location and create a stream of photos and optional short captions. The photos appear on Picplz.com and people can also post them to Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare.

“We’re keeping it really really stripped-down, letting the tool stay out of the way and letting people tell a story,” said Dalton Caldwell, Picplz’s co-founder and chief executive.

Mr. Caldwell and Picplz’s other co-founder, Bryan Berg, started it after selling the assets of Imeem, their now-shuttered music site, to MySpace. They began with a Web site and Android app, which 50,000 people have been using, and waited to offer an iPhone app until they worked out the kinks.

Of course, a lot of other companies do similar things. Flickr and Picasa are for sharing photos online, Tumblr and Twitter let people post photos with microblog entries and services like Twitpic and Yfrog are cellphone photo uploaders.

Mr. Caldwell says there is room for something new that combines these elements. More people are carrying cellphones with high-quality cameras, and the app makes it easy to share those photos and tag them with location. Several tech companies, including Google, have been talking about the potential value in images posted in real-time and tagged with location.

Picplz’s ultimate goal, he said, is not to be a photo uploader for other sites but to direct people to its site, where they can view photos by location or by user. Picplz hopes to build a community on the site and add more features based on how people use it, he said.

Unlike photo-sharing Web sites, Picplz is built around its mobile apps. “I think for the next generation of companies, the application they deliver on the mobile side is way more important than the Web site,” Mr. Caldwell said.

As for making money (the Android and iPhone apps are free), Mr. Caldwell says he will figure that out once Picplz builds up a user base, but that there are many opportunities for location-based advertising. Post a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge, for instance, and you might someday see ads for bridge bike rentals or a cafe nearby.

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