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PicApp Selected as Premiere Photo Source for Sports-Targeted Yardbarker Network and Raises $3.2M Led by Carmel Ventures

Online Image Service Introduces a Non-Flash Version of Its Embeddable Widget

Contributors to more than 550 web sites and blogs in the Yardbarker Network can access millions of premium quality photos from PicApp and post them next to editorial content at their sites.

"PicApp offers our bloggers and sports-focused audience a single source for great images from a variety of sports categories," said Pete Vlastelica, Yardbarker's CEO. "We look at PicApp as an invaluable new resource, a way to ensure our publishers have the top quality, current and legal content to use."

News and photo agencies licensing images via PicApp include, among others, Getty Images, Corbis, Image Source and Splash News. When an image is streamed from PicApp, it comes with a non-intrusive ad that provides a monetization tool on the content owner's behalf. PicApp also offers online publishers an enhanced tagging and traffic generation tool that is included within the images, automated image feeds and image-RSS tools to ease their publishing flow.

PicApp has also announced today a $3.2 million funding led by Carmel Ventures, a top-tier Israeli Venture Capital fund. "We have been assessing PicApp's impressive business progress for a while and are confident that the company is poised to lead this growing category of copyrighted content monetization over social media," said Rina Shainski, Carmel Ventures General Partner, who joined PicApp's board of directors together with known angel investors Yair Goldfinger (ICQ, Dotomi) and Lenny Recanati.

PicApp spun off from PicScout, the world's leading visual content monitoring company, to an independent company following the successful development of the picapp.com platform. The product was recently named as one of top 100 undiscovered sites by PCMagazine and gained much traction within blog networks and the blogging community.

"Since launching PicApp we achieved excellent growth. We have been working very hard to improve the products based on users feedback and have recently released a non-flash version of our application, which is something our users have been asking for," said Eyal Gura , PicApp CEO. "The partnership with the Yardbarker Network and the recent funding led by Carmel Ventures support our strong ambition to continue providing millions of worldwide online publishers easy and legal access to high quality images that is proven to enhance and drive traffic to their blogs."

About PicApp

PicApp (www.picapp.com) offers online publishers and bloggers a single source for millions of premium quality and free images to use legally and enhance their sites. News and photo agencies licensing images to PicApp include, among others, Getty Images, Corbis, Image Source and Splash News. PicApp has over 10 millions images with over 10,000 images updated daily; covering all types of editorial and creative image categories.

PicApp has spun off from PicScout to become an independent company, following the successful development of the picapp.com platform and is financially backed by Carmel Ventures.

Headquartered in San Francisco, the company has a development and operations center in Herzelia, Israel.

About Yardbarker Network

Yardbarker Network (www.ybnmedia.com) is the fastest growing men's media network on the web. YBN Media reaches millions of users per month through a unique model that combines the scalability of an advertising network with the original content and brand loyalty of a vertical media company. The YBN was born out of relationships between Yardbarker.com and the hundreds of independent sports publishers who hung out there to promote their content. What started as an informal affiliation of sites with like-minded audiences has evolved into a rapidly growing media company that serves advertisers, publishers, and celebrities in completely unique ways. YBN Media is based in Emeryville, CA.

About Carmel Ventures

With over $600 million under management, Carmel is among Israel's top-tier venture capital funds. Carmel's investments are focused primarily on early stage companies in the fields of Software, Communications, Internet, Media, Semiconductors, and Consumer Electronics. Founded in 2000 by pioneers and leaders of the Israeli high tech industry, Carmel provides active, hands-on support through the growth cycle of its portfolio companies. Carmel, headquartered in Herzelia, Israel enjoys a worldwide network of industry, strategic and investment resources.

Carmel is an affiliate of the Viola Group, a leading innovative private equity investment group with over $1.8B under management focused on technology-based investment opportunities in Israel. For more information, please visit .