Mobile photo-sharing company Tiny Pictures gets $7.2 million
Tiny Pictures, a company that operates a mobile media-sharing site called Radar, announced on Monday that it has pulled in $7.2 million in Series B funding. The funding round was led by Valley stalwart Draper Fisher Jurvetson; previous investor Mohr Davidow Ventures also contributed.
Radar's service lets users shoot mobile photos and videos to its site through e-mail and mobile messaging. All photos on Radar are automatically friends-only; members of a user's friends list can instantly see uploaded content and comment on it from their PCs or mobile phones.
It looks as if Radar has some fairly active users; despite having only 750,000 registered members (it's projected to have 1 million by the end of the first quarter), 15 million photos are uploaded each month--a decent number for a site so small. Tiny Pictures also boasts compatibility with most carriers (excluding a few small ones) and more than 225 varieties of handsets.
The company has deep connections: Tiny Pictures had already raised $4 million in a previous funding round and had also pulled in angel investments from LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, as well as longtime entrepreneur and investor Joichi Ito. Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am, who sits on Tiny Pictures' advisory board, is helping develop its "Radar Gallery" sponsored content for movie and music tie-ins.
With the new funding, San Francisco-based Tiny Pictures plans to focus on more opportunities with Radar Gallery, as well as international growth. Founder John Poisson is no stranger to the Asian market, having been head of mobile-media research and design for Sony in Tokyo.
Not surprisingly, he says the service is quite big in Japan.
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline. 
