Luminate Announces Partnership With Getty Images To Unlock Value With Image Metadata

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. and NEW YORK, Jan. 24, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Luminate, Inc., the worldwide leader in making images interactive, today announced that it will partner with Getty Images, the leading creator and distributor of digital media, to integrate Getty Images' original metadata into Luminate's image app platform. By incorporating Getty Images' metadata and ImageIRC™ technology into the image app, Luminate enables publishers to increase consumer interactivity with digital imagery elevating user engagement through visual content.

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Luminate will leverage Getty Images' industry-leading capabilities in identifying and cataloging millions of images with its powerful platform for image applications to power new products and initiatives. Luminate will integrate Getty images' metadata into its platform to transform millions of already published images into the most engaging element of a webpage. This partnership was born out of these brands' shared dedication to improve the engagement and value generation from imagery.

Luminate has long employed a combination of algorithms and crowdsourcing to match content with images. By integrating Getty Images metadata into its image app platform, Luminate's offering becomes faster, more accurate and more comprehensive. For example, Luminate will incorporate Getty Images metadata into its popular Related Tweets image app that allows consumers to view recent tweets related to the information within the image. The inclusion of the metadata will enable the Related Tweets functionality in more images across Luminate's growing network of more than 5,000 publisher sites. Supplementing human crowdsourcing with metadata analysis will also deliver the application to consumers more rapidly.

"We are delighted to partner with Getty Images," said Bob Lisbonne, CEO of Luminate. "Luminate enables consumers looking at a picture to share, buy, or find out more. By integrating Getty's metadata, the possibilities for future development are staggering, particularly as the Imagesphere continues to mature.

"Getty Images is excited to partner with Luminate to identify and apply valuable metadata to Luminate-enabled images via our ImageIRC and Connect platforms," said Craig Peters, Senior Vice President of Business Development, Products and Content at Getty Images. "Together, Getty Images and Luminate will help optimize the contextualization and engagement of images to the benefit of our customers and their audiences."

Luminate's image app platform currently gives consumers seamless access to interactive content, commerce, and social features directly from online images. By enabling true consumer engagement with images, the user experience becomes more immediate, more personal, and more interesting, making it more valuable not only to the viewer but to the publisher as well.

About Luminate

Luminate, Inc. is the worldwide leader in making images interactive serving more than 150 million users each month and 40 billion image views per year. Founded in 2008, with the vision to make every digital image interactive on the web, Luminate offers the world's first platform for image applications. Developed by technologists from Netscape and LiveOps, for the new era of the Imagesphere, Luminate's platform combines Internet and crowdsourcing technology to deliver the optimal content relevant to online images. Luminate is a private company funded by August Capital, CMEA Capital, Google Ventures, Nokia Growth Partners and Shasta Ventures, with headquarters in Mountain View, CA.

About Getty Images

Getty Images is a leading creator and distributor of still imagery, video and multimedia products, as well as a recognized provider of other forms of premium digital content, including music. Getty Images serves business customers in more than 100 countries and is the first place creative and media professionals turn to discover, purchase and manage images and other digital content. Its award-winning photographers and imagery help customers produce inspiring work which appears every day in the world's most influential newspapers, magazines, advertising campaigns, films, television programs, books and Web sites. Visit Getty Images at www.gettyimages.com to learn more about how the company is advancing the unique role of digital media in communications and business, and enabling creative ideas to come to life.  Additional information on how Getty Images inspires and powers communications can be found on The Getty Images Blog at blog.gettyimages.com as well as on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/gettyimages.

SOURCE Luminate, Inc.