Photo Marketplace App Pictorama Shuts Down, Fails To Pay Out Users' Revenue

Effective today, Pictorama is no more. Launched in mid-2012, Pictorama was an iPhone app that aimed to help users make money out of their smartphone photos. Basically, this was how the now defunct app worked. First, you would take a photo within the app or import a photo from your camera roll. Then, add categories and keywords to your photo and upload them to Pictorama's servers. The Pictorama community and experts would then take a look at your photo to determine whether it deserved to be put up in the marketplace. You would then get a revenue share each time your photo was sold. But here's the thing: there just weren't enough clients buying photos from Pictorama. Consequently, Pictorama had to be shut down because of "insufficient funds." Unfortunately, according to the announcement posted on the official Pictorama blog yesterday, it had to be shut down immediately:

Since we cannot wait more days we have to take the servers offline tomorrow (23rd of February).

As expected, the app is no longer available in the App Store. But to add insult to injury, the Pictorama team's "insufficient funds" had led to another unfortunate development:

Unfortunately this also means we are not able to pay out your account balance any further even if you have already requested the pay out. We are so sorry.

Shuttering the app at such short notice is one thing. But failing to give users what was due to them is quite another. Can you then blame the disgruntled user who commented with the following on Pictorama's Facebook page?

This is considered to be a theft. You have stolen our pictures, took profit and will not pay out our account balances!

Were you a Pictorama user? If so, do you think the Pictorama team's decision to shut the app down so quickly and without paying out users' balances is fair? We thank AppAdvice reader Richard for the tip. [gallery link="file" order="DESC"]

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