Starting Monday 21 May, we’re introducing image discovery on ThingLink by making is easier to find other images by each user.

When your ThingLink image is seen, we’ll also feature thumbnails of your other images. It’s how we’re making image discovery a click away. We’re also introducing a way for you to unlist an image you want to keep in draft mode.

Unlisting your images on ThingLink.com

You find the “Make image unlisted” feature in the image editor of your tagged images.

Checking the box unlists the image and no one will see it on ThingLink.com except for you and anyone who has the link. The image will of course still be visible on any other site that you may have tagged the image on.

Please unlist any images that you do not want to display on ThingLink.com by 21 May.

Thrillcall, a live event discovery service with exclusive daily offers, and ThingLink, the interactive image leader in music and entertainment, today launched the Thrillcall rich media tag that lets concert ticket buyers locate and purchase tickets through interactive images. When a user hovers on a picture of an artist or upcoming show, they can easily click through to purchase tickets or share with their friends, eliminating friction between brand experience and purchase.

“It’s now a lot easier to find out about shows, but getting people in the door is still a challenge,” said Matthew Tomaszewicz, Thrillcall co-founder. “We are trying to solve this by using our technology to create new ways for venues, artists and event promoters to get more people to the show and build a closer connection to music fans.”

Event promoters can now drive ticket sales by adding the Thrillcall rich media tag to images on Facebook and across the Web. This also extends the connection with fans by enabling anyone to share or embed the interactive images on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, via email and anywhere online.

ThingLink CMO Neil Vineberg added, “Images remain the most effective way for event promoters, record labels and music artists to attract audiences to events. By adding a Thrillcall tag inside images, ticket sales can now occur where audio, video players and social links already engage consumers in the artist experience.”

The Thrillcall/ThingLink tag features the latest three upcoming shows for any artist with a link back to that artist’s page on Thrillcall, where they can purchase tickets.

ThingLink has today announced the acquisition of Pixboom, the leading interactive image tagging service for the Swedish fashion industry.

Pixboom, founded in 2008 by entrepreneurs Jonas Sujkerbuik and Daniel Aspers and based in Stockholm, enables interactive images on hundreds of Swedish fashion blogs.

ThingLink CEO Ulla Engeström said: “Sweden leads the way in fashion blogging, and we’re excited to merge our collective expertise to build innovative interactive image services for fashion brands in ways that engage consumers and communities.”

Pixboom CEO Jonas Suijkerbuijk said: “We’re thrilled to be part of ThingLink and look forward to providing Pixboom clients with full access to ThingLink’s rich array of media tags, including sound and video players, e-commerce and social tags, image embeds, and one-click image sharing to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and email.”

Fashion blogger Lovisa Hansson added: “During the days I have been using ThingLink, my blog stats increased, and I personally think that the images now have a different function with these tags that I can add on them.”

Pixboom CEO Jonas Suijkerbuijk will join the ThingLink Advisory Board. ThingLink will also establish a community manager position for the fashion industry.

Since launching in 2010, ThingLink has innovated the interactive image category, enabling more than 20,000 publishers of interactive images, including leaders in music, publishing, entertainment, politics, e-Commerce and education.

For more information visit ThingLink.com.

ThingLink förvärvar Pixboom och tar steget in i Europas modevärld

ThingLink har i dag meddelat att de förvärvar Pixboom, den ledande interaktiva taggningstjänsten för den svenska modeindustrin.

Stockholmsbaserade Pixboom, som grundades år 2008 av entreprenörerna Jonas Sujkerbuik och Daniel Aspers har möjliggjort för hundratals bloggare att öka interaktiviteten på sina bilder på ett enkelt och snyggt sätt.

ThingLinks VD Ulla Engeström säger: “Sverige banar väg för modebloggningen, och vi är ivriga att sammanföra vår samlade expertis för att bygga innovativa interaktiva verktyg för modeindustrin i syfte att engagera nya konsumenter och grupper på nätet”.

Pixbooms VD Jonas Suijkerbuijk säger: “Vi är glada att vara en del av ThingLink och vi ser fram emot att förse alla Pixbooms användare med full tillgång till ThingLinks samling av medietaggar, inklusive audio- och videospelare, e-handel och sociala bildtaggar, bildinfogningar samt delning till Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr och epost med en klickning.”

Modebloggaren Lovisa Hansson tillade: “Under den tid jag använt ThingLink har min statistik på bloggen gått upp, och jag tycker personligen att bilderna nu har en annan funktion med de bildtaggar som jag kan sätta ovanpå dem.”

Pixbooms VD Jonas Suijkerbuijk ansluter sig till ThingLinks rådgivande panel. ThingLink anställer också en community manager för att assistera användare inom modesektorn.

Sedan lanseringen 2010 har ThingLink förändrat den interaktiva bilden, och möjliggjort taggning av bilder för fler än 20.000 utgivare, inklusive ledare inom musik, förlagsverksamhet, underhållning, politik, e-handel och utbildning.

För mer information besök Pixbooms sida på ThingLink.com.

Importing images from Facebook

So how do you get started? If you’re a new user, you’ll need to sign up. You will be prompted to upload or import images from Facebook or Flickr. Choose Facebook and sign into your account.

First you’ll see all your albums listed so click on the one you want to select images from. In the album, select one or several images and click “Import selected images”. All images will be imported to ThingLink and you’ll be able to tag them. If you only selected one image, the tag editor will automatically open.

Tagging with Instagram

Yes, you’re now able to tag images with your and other people’s Instagram photos. Since Instagram offers limited image browsing on their web version of the service it’s better that you use Gramfeed, Statigram or Webstagram to find interesting photos in their network. Just log in and grab the URL of any Instagram image. The URL needs to look like this - http://instagr.am/p/JwvlfkFtOV/, starting with http://instagr.am and followed by a unique number-letter series. Paste the URL into the tag editor’s link field and you’re set!

Wait, there’s more!

We have also released support for ThingLink image tagging, which means that you can tag ThingLink images with other ThingLink images. This makes it possible to create chains of tagged images for other users to explore. You’re able to create ThingLink image tags from any other ThingLink user’s tagged images.

Additionally, we’ve updated our tagging editor so that you can now easily share the image straight to Facebook’s Timeline once you’ve tagged it. Enable Facebook sharing from the editor by clicking “Activate sharing” and logging in. Check or uncheck the sharing option and click save. It couldn’t be easier than that.

I started at Wind-up in 2010 and was originally brought in to handle all the labels physical and digital production, as well as digital asset delivery and A&R operations. Being an indie label, we all wear many hats. Having come from a creative background with Universal (was their prior to Wind-up) I grew to take on indie Sales + Marketing, then Digital Marketing and finally to hold my current position of overseeing the Digital Strategy as it relates to Marketing and Sales for Wind-up.

2. What are the most important digital trends in the music industry right now? What tools are artists and labels overusing, and what are they under using?

I think the most important trends differ depending on where you are in your career as an artist. For instance, a new band, with no major, or major indie backing them can do so much more than ever before. It’s been said a million times, but you can do a lot on your own now. You can use Sonicbids to book shows, you can sell direct to fans with Topspin, you can get your music on iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Spotify and numerous other sites. You can sell it, ask fans to pay what they want, you can give tracks for email and really create a fanbase like never before.

However, having said that, I feel as if I am just repeating what the masses are saying. You still need to separate yourself from other artists. You need to be creative with how you do everything, you need to really have a plan and your plan must be consistent, creative and in-line with what you want your bands image to actually be. And then at the end of the day, your music has to be GREAT.

As far as tools, I think it depends on the band and their audience. Twitter and Facebook are obvious and should be used, but sites like Foursquare to offer specials at your shows and drive merch sales and awareness should be considered. Using the basic tools to spread the content in a creative way is far more valuable than spreading yourself thin and trying to establish a relationship with fans on numerous platforms. As a band, use what you would use yourself as a fan and then grow your base from there. Know where your fans are and know how to use the technologies you do use.

I think Flickr, or Instagram works for photos, Foursquare for check-ins, ThingLink for embeds and video promos/photo promos, as well as Facebook and Twitter on a regular basis. You might want to use Google+ and integrate YouTube into that since they tend to go hand and hand, but the most important thing is to not repeat yourself on these platforms. I also think a lot of artists are using Topspin, but I think more should. It feels underutilized to me for some reason. I also think bands are overlooking mobile. Have a mobile website – make sure everything loads on an iPhone and Android, as well as a Kindle and iPad. Do that right now.

3. What are the most common mistakes artists and labels make when engaging fans online?

Not asking a question to the fans and thinking that just posting “something” is engaging

4. What did you first think when you say Thinglink, and how have you used it with your artists?

I saw what Simple plan did and wish we had gotten to it first. Then we launched some exclusive Evanescence photos with it and they become some of the most shared items ever. I thought it was so simple and effective, that I was actually looking for “what else it did” – it didn’t need to do anything else though – it accomplished numerous items that we use so many other things for. It allowed for sharing, purchasing, following, liking and was engaging and creative all at the same time.

5. If you could create one killer app or digital tool for artists, what would it look like?

I can’t say because we are currently trying to build the answer to this question.

This is the first interview in a series on best practices for using ThingLink in publishing, e-commerce, education, and entertainment. Stay tuned for more.

Interview by Cortney Harding.

ThingLink Smart Tags enable a rich expression of links from many of the world’s leading publications and blogs, including Women’s Day, “O” Oprah, Time, Harper’s Bazaar, Better Homes and Gardens, Self, New York Times, Huffington Post, GigaOm, Mashable, TechCrunch, and TheNextWeb.

ThingLink CTO Janne Jalkanen said, “By introducing Open Graph Smart Tags, ThingLink is enabling publishers to visually convey links to content inside ThingLink images with no special coding or programming required.”

ThingLink also enables advertisers, brands, bands, media agencies and publishers to customize branded tags with a wide variety of functionality at ThingLink.com/developer.

Here are exemples of what  ThingLink Open Graph Smart Tags look like with links from different online publishers.

Sign up for an account by visiting ThingLink.com

Learn what artists from Van Halen to independent singer-songwriter Lucy Schwartz are doing to make their images more valuable using ThingLink. An image interaction platform, ThingLink allows users to embed audio, video, and rich media links in images and share them across the web and on Facebook. From the biggest rockstars to emerging artists, find out how these artists are driving page views and crazy high click-thru rates with this emerging technology. We’ll cover everything from the basics of image tagging to best practices to how to interpret ThingLink’s data.

To register, click here.

Van Halen

Lucy Schwartz

And now, it can all be ThingLinked. Moar content! More fun! Who needs sleep?

Yes, ThingLink now offers sharing to Twitter, Facebook AND Tumblr on all ThingLinked images. Users could, of course, post ThingLinked images to Tumblr before we made this change — but now the sharing is automated.

Take for example this Soundcloud Heroes post originally posted on their blog. It’s easily sharable to Tumblr. Try it out yourself  on the embedded image below.

We’ve also made it easier to reblog images on Tumblr — when you reblog a ThingLinked image in Tumblr, it is now reblogged with the tags intact.

And the tagged image can now also be viewed in your Dashboard — you only need to click the Play button to see the interactive image.

If all that wasn’t enough, those of you who love to look at your Tumblr pages in Flipboard will be happy to know that ThingLinked images also work in Flipboard. There’s no excuse not to start posting and reblogging ThingLinked images in the hottest micro-blogging platform around!

Watch this video of one of our awesome employees, Thomas, showing off how great ThingLinked images look in Flipboard:

Today we’re doing a couple of major improvements to our developer offering. First, we’re allowing the tags you create to be sticky, i.e. the tags can have a close button and they won’t go away when the user moves the mouse out of the tag. This is especially useful if you developed a video player or a similar application.

Example

<script type=”text/javascript”

src=”//www.thinglink.com/jse/thinglink.js”></script>

<script>

thinglink.setSticky(true);

</script>

Check out the deeper documentation at http://www.thinglink.com/help/Thinglink%20Javascript%20Library

Second, we released a Developer Preview of Thinglink Connect. Thinglink Connect is a simple library which makes it very easy to add Thinglink to any platform. It uses the industry standard OAuth2 –specification (or at least a very close approximation of revision -16 of it.)

Here’s an example how you would use it e.g. with JQuery 

<script src=”//www.thinglink.com/jse/tlconnect.js”></script>

<script>

TLC.init({

client:’[YOUR CLIENT ID]‘,

user: ‘[ANY USER ID]‘,

isOwner: true,

redirectUri: ‘http://mysite.com/thinglink/redirecturi.html’

});

</script>

<div class=”thinglinkConnect”></div>

First, we load the tlconnect.js script. In this case, we do it synchronously. Second, we initialize the TLC object which is created by the tlconnect.js script. We put in the client id (which you can get from your Developer page on www.thinglink.com/developer) , an user ID (which is an opaque string from you), the isOwner parameter specifying that yes, the user currently logged in on your site is also the person responsible for editing this site. Then, finally the OAuth2 –specified redirect URI.

Third, we add just a simple DIV which is replaced by TLC.init() with a nice little “Thinglink Connect” icon if the user isn’t yet logged in.

Check out the full documentation at http://www.thinglink.com/help/Developer. There are a lot more options, functions and tweakeroos available to ease your integration.  Please remember that this is a developer preview, so things might still be changing around a bit. If you want to influence the library and the API, now’s the time. We welcome comments at http://support.thinglink.com.

Oh yeah, and I almost forgot: we now support oEmbed on all of our image pages. It’s a quick hack, but let us know if you’re finding it useful. This should make it far easier to embed Thinglinked images if your platform supports the oEmbed standard.

ThingLink CTO Janne Jalkanen, @ecyrd

Remember image maps? Invented in 1993 at Honolulu Community College by student Kevin Hughes, image maps allow you to include multiple “clickable” areas within one image that link to specified URLs.

With more than 100 billion images online, several companies have expanded on the image-map concept with interactive image technology that lets users aggregate and tag content within images, offering marketers news ways for engaging brand communities.

Continue to the story.