Microsoft's Photosynth App Goes Worldwide After 6 Million US Downloads

Microsoft’s Photosynth App Goes Worldwide After 6 Million US Downloads

Mar 12, 2012 at 2:59pm ET by Matt McGee

Microsoft’s Photosynth iOS app, which has been available to US users for almost a year, is now available worldwide and includes a couple updates.

In its blog post today, Microsoft says the app has passed six million downloads since its US-only launch last April.

The app is now in version 1.1.3 and is available to iOS users around the world. It includes performance tweaks specifically for iOS5 users and adds Twitter sharing, too. Previously, photo panoramas could be shared on Bing Maps and Facebook.

If you’re not familiar with Photosynth, it’s an underrated product that makes it almost brain-dead simple to create photo panoramas without any additional stitching/editing required. The app itself does all the work and the user chooses where the upload/share the final panorama.

The search marketing angle to this is pretty simple: It’s like a do-it-yourself store photo tool for Bing Maps. A local business owner could use Photosynth to create a panorama inside his/her facility, then upload it to Bing Maps. If the imagery is tagged with the name of the location, it’ll show up on the business listing — see the Museum of Flight in Seattle on Bing Maps for an example.

About The Author: Matt McGee is Editor-In-Chief of Search Engine Land. His news career includes time spent in TV, radio, and print journalism. His web career continues to include a small number of SEO and social media consulting clients, as well as regular speaking engagements at marketing events around the U.S. He blogs at Small Business Search Marketing and can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee and/or on Google Plus. You can read Matt's disclosures on his personal blog. See more articles by Matt McGee

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Denis Vitchevsky

In no way was it US only. Israeli user here, was able to download photosynth months ago with an Israeli apple store account. Not a fluke, too, as I’ve recommended it to several coworkers over few months, and they could download it as well.
Matt McGee

Interesting, thanks for the update, Denis. Makes me think they did roll out Photosynth quietly outside the US but never announced anything until it was available everywhere today.
Johann Visagie

Yep, same here in Germany. It’s been available on the local App Store for a long time — almost a year I’d say — and I’ve been recommending it to a number of friends.
Ruth_OL

Yes, and the UK too – I’ve had it for months. So are the 6 million downloads really US-only, or worldwide? If US-only, how many downloads have there been globally?