One shot and you’re a winner! That’s the experience users of the PointMe mobile app can expect. By taking a photo and sharing it to your friends via Facebook you win rewards from restaurants, bars and other places where the photo was taken! Brands such as the popular beer brand Heineken, as well as Austria’s Erste bank have already taken advantage of this innovative approach to social media marketing!

The Rise of Photo… Rewards!

PointMe takes advantage of an obvious trend among users of social media networks and apps: The rise of the photo sharing app and user’s adoption of photos and videos as a far more personal format than traditional text-based messages that Twitter, for example, offered at its beginning. It was, of course, because back then mobile data was expensive and it was both easier and cheaper to send text-based tweets than upload photos from your mobile device. Since then, mobile data has gotten cheaper and with it Twitter has put more emphasis on photos, Instagram was launched and now Snapchat’s videos are dominating the communication of 18-25 year-olds!

That’s where PointMe comes in. A pretty simple app, PointMe is a self described social platform that lets you share your experiences on products and places while earning real-world rewards. The app actually found a sweet spot that fits into most social network users’ workflow. While applications such as Foursquare and others have tried to be the one stop shop to check into locations such as restaurants while earning rewards, PointMe actually doesn’t need to be popular to make sense both to its users and its business partners.

Download PointMe for Android

The way PointMe works is that you download the free app available on the Google Play store and then find an offer that makes sense to you. It can be a free coffee in an ice cream place or a deal on Coke and fries if you take a selfie! After you take the photo (and share it via popular social networks such as Facebook), you claim your reward.

It’s so simple that you don’t need to think about having to check into a location for 10 times, become a mayor or anything like that. If it takes just one photo, especially a selfie, it’s built for today’s Instagram and Facebook image-flaunting mobile users. Which is probably the reason that PointMe enjoys a 5 star score on Google Play, with users citing how easy it is to use to earn a reward.

PointMe’s partners, such as Heineken, at the same time get a lot of social media activity that is directly tied with their brand, with offers being tied to a user being an actual customer. This way the partners know that they aren’t giving stuff away for free: They’re serving actual customers with additional goodies that they use to promote the brand on popular social networks. And it’s an image – not just text!

From Croatia to Slovenia – to the World

PointMe is based in Croatia with team members Mateo Stupicic as CEO, CTO Juraj Zoric and developers Mateo Perčinić and Dejan Misljenovic as developers, Marko Pavicic as head of sales and Davor Pejic as head of marketing. Just 3 months after launching the app on the Google Play Store, PointMe has over 60 companies they work for and over 900 active users! The team is currently heading to Slovenia and the ABC Accelerator where they’ve become a member of the new batch of startups as well as received an initial seed investment of over 15,000 Euros.

If you use Android, definitely try out PointMe on your Android device, while if you’re an iPhone user like me expect an iOS version of the app to soon be available on the App Store!