Capturing memories, PastBook style

Print lovers have to appreciate this headline!

It was great to see news this week on $250,000 of venture funding going to PastBook. They are an Amsterdam-based startup featuring a service to allow users to store photos from their social media sites into a more permanent, organized format, including hard-copy books.

The Insider, part of The Next Web, has a great story on the company, including their brief history and future plans, by Robin Wauters. (See "PastBook raises $250,000, helps you capture your digital memories.") The Wall Street Journal’s Nick Clayton, in their TechEurope Blog, offers a summary of the Insider coverage, and a great headline (see above, and “PastBook’s $250,000 to put Digital Memories in Print”.)

As part of TechCrunch's coverage (see "PastBook Raises $250K To Help Preserve Online Memories,Instagrammers First In Line"),

Steve O'Hear described the company's offering, which features Instagram integration as its first platform, with Facebook to follow. O'Hear offers the following:

The cloud element is reminiscent of things like the latest pivot from Jolicloud or services such as memolane, and there are a plethora of on-demand printing offerings that will turn your Instagram or Facebook photos into a physical book.

We've covered photobook-making and the tie-in to sites like Instagram here, for several years, and if the number of services offering this service qualifies as a "plethora", that must be good news for print, right?



O'Hear goes on to state the company plans to go well beyond print in the future, and also points out the (beta) availability of web browsing and PDF printing in PastBook's current offering.

Those additional formats include producing a PDF file, which I tried (with great results) with my recent Instagram photos. As a Beta user, it was offered as a freebie, though in the future, there will be a charge for creating a PDF. This charge represents an interesting revenue opportunity beyond that built into the photo-book pricing.