the wedding gets "smart"

Practically everyone in the whole world has a smart phone, except for my mother (that will never happen) and everyone loves taking and sharing pictures. So it wasn't a big surprise when these two strangers collided to create one of the coolest new apps I've ever heard. The new WedPics app allows guests at events, such as weddings, to take pictures and share them in the same cloud where other guests and even the couple can see them. 

This all started when Justin Miller, CEO and co-founder of this app was sitting at the back of a concert, blocked with fan's smartphones, wishing there was any way he would be able to get any of their pictures. Miller along with co-founders Idan Koren, Andy Heymann and Tyler Mahoney received $800,000 from investors and their first app, Deja Mi, was born. This device captured the attention of large corporations. They paid big bucks for attendees of their conferences to use this app to upload pictures or freely share information. This became so successful that they decided to try a more invigorating market, the wedding industry.

The company’s second app, called WedPics, allows couples to pay $99 in which there are given an access code. This code is then passed on to the guests. Guests can then download the free app on their smartphones and enter the access code. After that, it’s like magic. Instantly the guests are entered into this private Instrgram party where the uploading happens live. The couple then is granted access to this cloud and they can download or save of their favorites.

With so many components in the 80 billion a year industry; WedPics hopes to become the photo sharing app on top. They are mindful of their competitors in photo sharing (Facebook and Flickr) and their direct competitors (Wedding Snap and Wedding Party). They market themselves as the “convenient, safe, and cheap alternative to disposable cameras,” hoping they will gain favor.

With big things occurring with technology, it’s great to see such a traditional industry such as the wedding one, converting from the dark ages and into the light of technology.