ThingLink and 360Cities Launch a Global 360 Photo Service For Virtual Reality Marketing

Andrew Beelitz June 29, 2016

We are excited to announce a partnership with 360Cities.net, the world’s largest network of 360 photographers. As ThingLink’s technology lets users drive engagement with annotated 360-degree photos that can include text, image, audio, and video as well as custom widgets for e-commerce, 360Cities’ worldwide network of panorama photographers can in turn be called upon to capture any place or space around the globe.

The partnership lets us introduce new 360- and VR-related services to marketers and online publishers globally. Our existing clients can now access custom 360 images from skilled contributors to 360Cities and use the ThingLink 360 editor to easily and cost-efficiently create their own customized virtual reality experiences in a matter of hours.

Marketers from consumer goods and fashion to tourism and real estate are eager to start publishing in 360 and VR, but don’t have the time to find a good photographer and arrange a photoshoot. This partnership solves that problem. Now any ThingLink client, whether it is a retailer, a real estate agent, a restaurant owner, or a college, can contact us and book a 360 photographer in any major city of the world. 

Founded in 2008, 360Cities provides high-resolution 360-degree images for publishing, advertising & film, virtual reality, and mobile app & game development, and is the preferred publishing platform for thousands of the top panorama photographers from around the globe, who together have built an immersive panoramic world composed of hundreds of thousands of stunning, 360-degree photos.

“Our contributors represent a unique resource – a worldwide network of photographers specialized in 360 photography,” says Steve Hercher, Commercial Director for 360Cities.net. “Our network is a great match for ThingLink’s large user base of online publishers. Now any ThingLink client can commission 360-degree images for use in ThingLink’s 360/VR Editor.”

Our partnership will initially support affordable turnkey services for brand and real estate marketing, such as creating a virtual store or interactive 360 real estate and school tours. Virtual Store is an interactive 360-degree tour of a store or showroom interior where viewers can explore displayed items. A 360 virtual tour is targeted to real estate agents interested in easy creation of virtual reality visits with details about each listing embedded right in the image. An interactive campus or school tour may be augmented with text, music, video interviews with professors and students, etc.

Images can be customized using the ThingLink 360/VR image editor, an online tool that makes it easy to annotate panoramic images with text, image, and audio annotations as well as web embeds for mobile view. Audio and video annotations play when the viewer aligns a pointer with an icon that is displayed in the picture.

Viewing ThingLink interactive 360 images is browser based and requires no special software, although clients can include their virtual store in ThingLink’s new VR Stories app. ThngLink interactive 360 images can be shared and promoted on Facebook News Feed.