According to a recent study by Pew Research Center, 43 percent of the global population owns a smartphone. In the United States that number is even higher, where 72 percent of adults own a smartphone device. With smartphone rates so high, we’re documenting the world around us more than ever, as capturing and sharing images in real time is simple, fast and addictive.
Subsequently, the Internet has given rise to a global population of photographers, who inundate social networking feeds with content from their easily accessible smartphone cameras. A new startup called Scop.io is looking to capitalize on this trend, and is slowly building a huge library of user generated photos and videos from social media in the process.
Christina Hawatmeh founded Scop.io out of the Columbia Startup Lab and launched the company in April with a mission to help users discover the millions of images posted to social media and license them for their own use. In comparison to traditional photo libraries such as Getty Images or Shutterstock, user generated photos and video attract 40 times more engagement online, as they tend to be more relatable and timely.
The platform works like this: using Scop.io, users can search authentic social images from Instagram and Twitter and then request to license any photo with a customizable message. Users can set up unique campaigns with hashtags and keywords, which the platform’s algorithm will then sift through to generate a relevant feed of images.
While trending content often gets lost among the haystack on social media, resulting in media blackouts, Scop.io’s automated system finds, organizes and stores these photos and videos.
For example, if a user is in need of images to compliment content surrounding the ongoing presidential election, he/she can use Scop.io's growing library of licensed Instagram photos to find applicable content.
The idea is to empower social media contributors to get paid for their trending photos and videos, and for brands to publish more customized and timely visual content. Scop.io already has 40 million images in its library, and has categorized 42,000 of those images as original content.
“We hope to be the next Getty images of social media,” said Hawatmeh. “Ultimately, we want to change the way people see the world with more relevant, real content that will make the world a better place.”
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