New PhotoPad app for Facebook

Unlike software programs or photo-editing sites, the PhotoPad app works within Facebook, making customization and sharing easier than ever. The app lets users choose from a collection of animations or "gestures" to share with friends, or to post on their own walls to enrich their status updates. Users simply select photos from their personal albums and use PhotoPad’s tools to craft personalized images to share. PhotoPad makes it quick and easy to turn a Facebook album into an impressive photo book and share treasured memories with family and friends.

Using their own Facebook photos, users can create custom albums, set them free by posting them on status updates, or adding them directly to friends’ walls.

"I created PhotoPad after realizing how limited the photo-sharing experience on Facebook truly is," said Diane Najm, founder of Virtual Gestures. "At the time, I had just returned from vacationing in Europe. I had so many amazing photos to upload and I was beyond excited to share them, but I quickly realized that Facebook’s flat features were incapable of capturing my story as I’d hoped to tell it. That’s what ignited the spark that eventually led me to develop the PhotoPad app." Although most Facebook users used the site to interact with friends, many of them felt the simple "post and comment" photo structure limits their level of communication, Najm added. "PhotoPad lets users connect on a much deeper level, and I think that’s incredibly important."

Now that the app has ended its beta phase, every user on Facebook can experience its features – and Najm has no doubts that many of them will. "Based on the massive response we received just in the beta phase, I expect to see a huge influx in new users and activity", she said,

After establishing Virtual Gestures in October, 2010, Najm received a patent for PhotoPad. The beta release of the app shortly thereafter quickly earned more than 81,000 "likes" on Facebook. The app proved to be especially popular with women between the ages of 18 and 35, possibly because women in this age group are leaving home, traveling, getting married and starting families – documenting their experiences with photos along the way.

PhotoPad gives users the opportunity to share these kinds of events with their friends and family in ways a simple photo cannot – and it rewards them every time they do. Each interaction with the app benefits the user by increasing their chances of winning monthly sweepstakes, of earning badges and of leveling up. In doing so, PhotoPad transforms passive photo sharing into an interactive gaming experience.