New Startup Puts Ads In Your Picture Frames

Posted by Matt on September 23rd, 2007

• - Happy Birthday Grandma!
• - “Oh! Thank you son! What’s that?”
• - It’s your new wireless digital picture frame loaded with FrameMedia. Now you can have new pictures of your grandkids without me having to visit.
• - “What’s that Pepsi ad doing next to little Timmy’s face?”
• - Oh thats nothing. Look! It says its 80 degrees in Japan. Neat.

FrameMedia is a new startup based in Wellesley, MA that provides streaming content for the wireless digital picture frame business. Okay, so there’s not so much of a wireless picture frame business, but FrameMedia is banking on projections that by 2008 up to 8 million digital pictures will be sold, a large number of them having WiFi capabilities. The startup allows users to setup a RSS feed that can stream personal photos to wireless picture frames, along with news, weather, and business headlines.

All this is free if you allow FrameMedia to send ads along with the content. Yes, advertising on your digital picture frame. You can get the content ad free if you fork over $5/month.

Frame Media co-founder and CEO Alan Philips, a former executive of uLocate and ZDnet/CNET Networks, explains FrameMedia’s purpose:

“We’re seeing the frame market take off from the hardware standpoint, but no one is addressing the software and content…”

I think Alan is going to have trouble competing with the current killer app for these digital photo frames. Family photos. Really though, people like seeing pictures of their love ones. Yes, I know sometimes you just don’t want to look at that picture of your ugly mother in law, but digital picture frames really don’t need more content. No one wants weather, news, or business headlines on their picture frame. We’ve got the television or computer for that. I think most people would be fine with a modified Flickr’s RSS feed. Either way, imagine if a black hat got a hold of your grandmother’s digital frame’s RSS feed. A big schlong next to poor little Timmy.

Tags: Boston Startups