Through partnerships with Renren and Tencent Weibo, Cooliris, a Silicon Valley-based photo viewing and management service, has achieved combined growth with over 50x increase in user acquisition in China. Beyond pure acquisition, engagement of those users increased significantly as well, with over 20% of Chinese users returning to the app on a weekly basis.
Based on the huge user base, Cooliris discovered that the audiences from these two different social networking platforms behaved quite differently in terms of photo consumption and sharing. Time spent and photos viewed per person in Tencent Weibo doubled that in Renren, but Renren photos are being shared 50% more than Tencent photos.
Cooliris said that users are spending more time and viewing more photos in Tencent due to the curated public feed of photos (consumption intent), but users are sharing and starting conversations about Renren photos because the users on the platform have more personal relationships with each other (sharing intent).
Furthermore, the company announced a partnership today with Baidu to offer a next-generation media experience on mobile phones. With this partnership, Cooliris will gain access to Baidu’s complete API suite. With today’s release of the Cooliris app for iPhone and iPad, users of Baidu MyCloud, Baidu’s personal cloud storage service with over 100 million users, will be able to enjoy all their stored photos on-the-go with Cooliris’ mobile application.
Chinese users can easily connect photos from their device, social networks and now cloud storage services all in one place. Users can also discover, experience and share these photos selectively with groups of close friends. The Cooliris app is localized in simplified and traditional Chinese.
“Baidu offers a terrific way for international developers to reach China’s fast-growing mobile Internet market, and working with a leading Valley company like Cooliris will help us build an open cloud ecosystem that extends beyond China”, said Hou Zhenyu, chief architect of Baidu Cloud.
“Our partnerships in China have given our users greater access to amazing and localized content.” said Soujanya Bhumkar, Cooliris CEO and co-founder.
The new version of Cooliris is available for free for in the iTunes App Store. Cooliris will be adding support for Android users in the upcoming months.