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To show just how prevalent brand images are across the web, Stipple built an image calculator for Ad Age readers at stipple.com/imageaudience. Just input a brand's URL to see how widespread its images are. for BMW, for example, 405 million hits come up (at this writing) in just the past seven days. Stipple falls into the same space as ThingLink and Luminate, which both attach a commerce element to images. The idea of image-based commerce has marketers excited about services like Pinterest and The Fancy. But in order to capitalize on this opportunity, sellers need a system to assert some degree of control - a way to keep the information associated with their products consistent across the web.

"While at least Life-magazine-killer TV has served as a platform for the creation of some great artworks (HBO's "The Wire," created by newspaperman-turned-TV-auteur David Simon, comes to mind) and inspired the creation of new art forms (see the upcoming Smithsonian retrospective of the work of "father of video art" Nam June Paik), it's hard to imagine what of lasting value hot web-native media brands like Gawker and BuzzFeed are contributing to visual culture and art history. Which brings me to an email I got last Wednesday from Gawker promoting its "top story" of Dec. 5., titled "The 13 Most Powerful Images of Naked Celebrities of 2012," which quickly racked up more than a million page views. It was a sequel to a Gawker post from the previous day titled "The 19 Most Powerful Images of 2012," which was mostly a shameless, edited-down rip-off of a BuzzFeed post titled "The 45 Most Powerful Images Of 2012," consisting of intense wire-service photojournalism from Reuters, the AP, Getty and others, which derive most of their support from old-school print-centric publications around the world. Gawker's excuse for its act of, uh, curation: "Who has time to scroll through 45 pictures?""

The sheer volume of images generated on social media is staggering. Between Facebook and Instagram alone, consumers are generating nearly 2.5 billion images every week. Images are becoming so core to the social experience, that Facebook just revamped its feed to be more visual. Add into the mix Pinterest, Tumblr, Polyvore and Wanelo, and it's clear that consumers increasingly prefer to communicate with pictures rather than words. 

Marketers just got a powerful new way to reach fans on Facebook: interactive images powered by ThingLink. The popular interactive-image platform officially hit Facebook on Tuesday morning. That means posts there now let fans interact with content embedded "inside" an image - other photos, video or text blocks, for example - without leaving Facebook Timeline.

"The site has three themes: Timeless Tiffany includes the story of Tiffany, including its diamond heritage, major milestones, masterpieces, drawings from the Tiffany Archives and a virtual hall of fame that showcases vintage ads and images of jewelry from every fashion era from the Gilded Age to the present day; Tiffany Insider, a gallery of images and videos that Tiffany says "captures the excitement and creativity behind photo shoots, dressing stars in Tiffany diamonds and unveiling windows that invite the imagination to dream of elegant new worlds"; and Tiffany In Style, which covers events and introduces designs in jewelry and accessories, along with advertising images and videos."

Getty Images partnered with East London media artists The Light Surgeons to create an interactive experience at Cannes Lions 2013 which explores their vast video archive of 1.8M clips through meta-tagging and connections to reveal the conceptual relationships between image and word. Getty Images' international creative experts shared their insights around the future of video at the event.

Smartphones are on a fast track to become the primary device for both creating and consuming digital content. According to the Pew Internet for the American Life Project, already a full 31% of Americans who own internet-capable phones browse the web primarily from their phones. These numbers are actually higher in emerging markets. What's more, there are at least three other factors at work here. First, images are global. They eschew all language and cultural boundaries. Photography is the only true universal medium. Nothing comes close. Second, images are distributable. The bandwidth required to transmit photos is minimal, yet the opportunities for quick, creative expression are plentiful. As of this writing, Apple's App Store alone has over 10,000 iPhone apps in its photo category -- many of them for editing. Photoshopping has been democratized. Finally, images are digestible. You can glance at a picture for as short or as long as you want. Photos are a non-linear, shared consumption experience. The same can't be said for video or even text.

Kotaku has obtained an image of what it claims is the first "Made For iPhone" controller. Purportedly made by Logitech, the controller looks similar to the guidance images Apple released when it detailed the new iOS 7 controller API. It features what appears to be a circular D-pad, four action buttons, and a pause key. The guidance images also called for either two or four shoulder buttons to be included, but it's difficult to see from Kotaku's blurry image if the controller has any shoulder buttons at all, let alone how many.

pulls the first image from google for each word in a phrase to give you a pictorial view of what you are trying to say

flickr users can opt out of allowinf their images to be pinned. I think its interesting that Pinterest is going ahead and allowing opt-out before too many people get upset about copyright infringements. 

Overview of interactive images and how to use them to enhance engagement

Pixazza rebranding as Luminate. Focusing on in-image apps/

"Microcontent sharing takes this to the next level: What if you could break down an article into its constituent parts and share them independently? Perhaps one day aggregators could reassemble not just articles into a personalized newspaper, but also individual quotes, images and videos? I'm so excited about microcontent sharing that we've implemented it into the new Mashable.com. If you visit an article on the site and hover over an image or quote, we provide options to share that piece of content to your social networks. We hope to take this idea even further in future iterations, but it's a start."

More in-image ads

A recent study from marketing firm Performics shows that 33 percent of people are most likely to respond to brand offers when they are reposted by a friend. The study states that 27 percent will do so on the brand's page, 26 percent from the newsfeed, and 20 percent from a social ad. The study also touched on some valuable information about branded content engagement. Consumers are most likely to engage with branded content containing images (44 percent). A close 40 percent of people said they are likely to engage with Status Updates and 37 percent with videos.

zales has offering a "print-to-pin" where people can scan a image on an ad and it links back to their pinterest page.  people can also pin images featured in the ad.

Plus accounts include one Facebook page and 500 image uploads per month for $5 monthly, while Pro accounts, at $20 per month, cover five Facebook pages and include unlimited images. ThingLink added that its users include Van Halen, Gucci Maine, Blink-182, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio), Canadian newspaper National Post, British comedian Alan Partridge, and the U.K. music weekly NME.

a klout for pinterest -- pinpuff ranks users on a 100-point scale. The metrics for the image-based site are similar to those on Facebook or Twitter, and include tracking the number of followers and activities like "pinning" and "repinning" images. also estimates dollar value generated by pins