[Tel Aviv, ISRAEL] ImageJuice is raising its first post-seed round of funding to turn Web content into a movie, so surfers can stop clicking through pages and just sit back and watch.
“We believe in a world of living sites where there are not going to be any more pages,” said ImageJuice chief executive Eli Gavra. “The user goes into the site and all the information is one the same page. A one-page show.”
Instead of a hierarchy of pages, ImageJuice turns the content, say the products being sold in an online shop, into a movie.
Without downloading anything, users see and can adjust the speed and direction of images streaming past on the homepage. They watch until they see something interesting, at which point they take up the mouse, pause the movie and click on the image for more information.
“We can present any site based on pictures like this,” said Gavra. The company has already “juiced” sections of two sites: Israeli shopping mall 522 and online art gallery ArtLink.
Building the movies does not need a programmer, said Gavra. ImageJuice’s Studio links to the site’s database of still images or video films, flash animations or other visual media. The Webmasters or site designers can either create a specific movie by hand-picking the images, or set a rule so that everything associated with the keyword “summer” is in one movie, for example.
ImageJuice has a two-pronged business model. A client can license the technology and take on responsibility for the process, or smaller sites, using the ASP-based model, can have their movies hosted on ImageJuices servers.
Future plans include ImageJuice for the Palm Pilot.
The company, whose seed investors are Israeli accelerator Runway and Elco Technologies, currently has six employees in its Israel and Silicon Valley offices and is now looking to raise between $2 and $3 million.