Looking to extend its reach into the rapidly growing image search sector, leading online news distribution service PRWeb has partnered with one of the most popular photo-sharing sites on the Internet, Photobucket. Images uploaded to PRWeb as part of a multimedia news release will now automatically be added to a site co-branded by the two companies, making them easily accessible to the 22 million unique monthly visitors that search for images on Photobucket.
Several recent studies have underscored the emergence of image search as one of the fastest-growing areas in the search market, including a 2009 survey from Hitwise that determined it to be Google's third-largest source of revenue behind only Web search and YouTube searches. Additional research presented at last week's New Communications Forum revealed that, on average, images can increase time spent viewing a news release by about 30 seconds.
The new partnership significantly expands the range of PRWeb customers that include images with their releases, as Photobucket's 100 million registered users link billions of photos to sites such as Facebook, Twitter, eBay, Craigslist and others. A service of Vocus, Inc., PRWeb has been forming similar partnerships in its ongoing efforts to broaden its online distribution network.