Roundme Raises $3M To Turn Panoramic Photos Into Virtual Tours

Round.me, which allows users to explore global locations through panoramic photos, has raised a $3 million round led by April Capital.

The app is available on both the web and iOS. It allows you to browse different Spaces, which are basically panoramic images of locations like a Taoist temple in the Philippines and an ice cave in Vermont (to pick two examples from Roundme’s front page). The iOS experience is particularly immersive — the Spaces respond to the movement of your phone, almost creating the illusion that you’re photographing the real location.

Photographers can include more information inside a Space through embedded Hotspots, and link images together through a Portal. (Yes, that’s a lot of capitalization, but hey, I’m just following the company’s lead here.)

CEO Konstantin Andreev told me via email that his goal was “to create the best virtual tour experience in the panoramic photography marketplace.” And it’s not just meant to be useful to consumers.

“The idea was to develop a simple to use app whereby real estate and photography professionals could present their portfolios directly to any consumer in a seamless experience that included hosting, sharing, search capabilities, location awareness and social reach,” Andreev said. “That’s the key: the socialization aspects and embedding of information through hotspots within tours makes Roundme an extremely unique product.”

Roundme launched last year, and Andreev said more than 3,000 “professionals and semi-professionals” have signed up.

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/pKok0HybLXk/

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