When Bitnik, Inc was created, our founders envisioned making great software for real people and giving users the power to edit digital photos in their browser, without having to purchase or download complicated software. While our first office in 2005 only had two desks, today we’ve grown to 20 employees and have become the world’s most fun online photo editor, with millions of visitors every month. As we’ve grown together over the years, we’ve worked hard to build a company of great people creating great software. We think our emphasis on strong partnerships, a fun culture and you, our users, is what has made Picnik so awesome.

And all this leads us to today’s exciting news: we’ve just been acquired by Google! What does this mean for Picnik? It means we can think BIG. Google processes petabytes of data every day, and with their worldwide infrastructure and world-class team, it is truly the best home we could have found. Under the Google roof we’ll reach more people than ever before, impacting more lives and making more photos more awesome.

What does this mean for you Picnikers? Nothing is changing right away, but Picnik now has more potential than ever before. The team that built Picnik from the grass up will continue making advanced and powerful photo-editing easier, more intuitive and more fun, so stay tuned to hear about all the cool new stuff we’re working on. We want to thank you all for being great users, pushing us to grow and do big things. So thank you all for your continued support, and Happy Picniking!

- Mike, Darrin, Jonathan, Peter, Brian, Justin, Virginia, Steve, Charlie, Brenda, Michael, Ali, Sonia, Sarah, Lisa, Chelsea, Kelcey, Maria, Annie Laurie, Pearl, Michael B and Tim

(more…)

This is, according to our calculations, Picnik’s BILLIONTH edited photo:

It comes from Gísli Hjálmar, an Icelandic law student working as a technician and one of Flickr’s more prolific Picnikers. To celebrate, and to show him off a bit, we asked him a little bit about himself.

He became interested in photography when he was around 19, but then didn’t take pictures for nearly 20 years before starting up again three years ago.

Two years ago he discovered Picnik, and now does most of his photo editing with us (even though he has Photoshop on his computer). His favorite part of Picnik? The Seasonal Effects! How does he feel about his photo being Picnik’s billionth edited photo? He’s “very happy” and for good reason: Gísli now has a lifetime subscription to Picnik Premium!

Of all the thousands of photos being edited Wednesday morning, we’re so happy that the person with the billionth photo is such an interesting guy, an enthusiastic photographer and a good Picniker! It makes us think about all the millions of interesting people out there with their squillions of interesting pictures using Picnik all the time, and we can’t wait to see what the next billion brings. Thank you all and happy Picniking!

Ding ding ding! Big news here at Picnik World Headquarters! Today our crack team of server specialists cracked open the champagne in their Top Secret Server Lair high above downtown Seattle when the Official Picnik Tally Counter ticked over to one billion photo edits!

To put this into perspective:

One billion seconds: nearly 32 years
One billion minutes ago: Trajan was Emperor of Rome
One billion days ago: Lucy was still alive and well
One billion edits ago: it was October 2007!

To celebrate this HUGE number, Picnik Premium is free for everyone today! So enjoy those Effects, admire all that’s Advanced and go nuts with Seasonal from 9 a.m. today until 9 a.m. tomorrow, February 4th, Seattle time (PST)!

Time’s up! Thank’s so much everyone for helping to make this possible, and many happy Picniking returns!

It can be hard to keep up with what’s new here at Picnik. Unlike traditional software companies that put a new box on shelves every 18 months or so, we do updates every week! Sometimes they’re little updates, moving menus around or fixing bugs to make it easier for you to use Picnik, but other times it’s an avalanche of awesomeness. Here’s how you can better keep track of everything we’re up to here at Picnik World HQ:

If you have a Twitter account, and statistically speaking, you do, follow us @Picnik for all the latest feature updates, office shenanigans, promos and freebies, delivered instantly to your timeline.

And on Facebook, join the rest of our 173,000-plus fans for all those updates and the fun pictures that we make for just all you Facebookers too!

And don’t forget! If you have any questions or need any help, don’t hesitate to email our intrepid feedbackers at feedback@picnik.com! And of course we always read the comments here on the blog, too. Happy Picniking!

Out with the old, in with the new! It’s 2010 already: A whole new year, a whole new decade!

Like most things on the internet, there’s not much about Picnik that can really be thought of as old, exactly. But boy do we have new stuff to ring in the new year! We’ve spent all of 2009 churning out new features and functionality to make Picnik even awesomer with Touch-ups, Show, masses of seasonal effects, new shapes and Stickers, new Effects, even new Team Picnik members! So much new for the New Year!

With all this exciting new stuff, Picnik’s at risk of getting a little big, a little heavy, a little rotund. Nearly doubling the amount of features on a site is bound to have an effect on the waistline, but we mustn’t let the holiday excess stay permanent! So our resolution for the new year is to keep Picnik trim, in shape and moving briskly despite all the updates!

What about all you Picnikers? What would you like to see in Picnik in the new year? Let us know! And in the mean time, all of us at Team Picnik wish all of you a very happy and healthy new year!

And here comes Rudolf! And here come all your friends in funny hats! Because our Holiday Effects, Stickers, Frames and Fancy Collages are out!

So light up your nose, sling on some antlers and wreathe yourself in holly (or nuts!) for the most festive faces in town. It’s perfect for your Facebook profile, Twitter avatar, LinkedIn headshot or Congressional portrait, so make yourself a Snow Queen, a Reindeer or downright unrecognizable behind all that beard because we here at Team Picnik have put out a whole new section of flattering effects, silly hats and a whole bunch of nuts for our best holiday collection ever.

It’s a short week here at Picnik World Headquarters, due to the American holiday of Thanksgiving, aka Turkey Day. While we’re off working on our holiday waistlines, the rest of you (including Canadians, who have been here already) can dive into our whole new section of Holiday hats, beards, jolly red noses, Christmas Lights, Frost and Nuts, winterizing effects and Frames!

And for you Americans, we’ve got just the thing for those of us who’ll be having friends and family over for the Thanksgiving holiday with fun projects like Recipe Cards, Place Cards, Holiday Cards and more in our new festive Fancy Collages. And for after Thanksgiving, get started early on your Christmas shopping (or Wish List writing) with Picnik Premium, of course!

You may have noticed that we’ve gone whole hog over Halloween here at Picnik this month! We’ve got a whole new section of new Effects, Stickers and Touch-Ups, plus fonts in skeletons, ghosts, and other creepy Text, for maximum spookiness.

But we didn’t stop there! In the Library tab we’ve got a whole other line of Halloween content for you: Halloween Fancy Collages!

Halloween is obviously a holiday we love here at Picnik World Headquarters. Maybe it’s because it was the first holiday after our launch two years ago and the first occasion for any seasonal content, or maybe it’s because we’ve all been transformed into werewolves, zombies, vampires and other manifestations of the undead. Whichever it is, we always have a lot of fun at this time of year and, with a little help from Picnik, we hope you do too!

Don’t forget the whole section of new features we’ve devoted to Halloween this year:

Vampire yourself! We’ve got the tools to let your eyes reflect your thirst, put a blood-gorged bloom in your cheeks, get vampiric film star good looks and a bloody tinge to your shiny new canines.

Get re-animated! Detect the delectable dead with Ghoul Eye, Zombify 2.0 (now with added rotting!) and the most hideous wounds we could find.

Haunt your friends and family! Manifest yourself to the living with Ghostify, make your photos the future with Crystal Ball, add a shaft of lightning to your dark and stormy nights and add the ghosts that only you can commune with to your sinister shots.

Plus! Give yourself ogre good looks, stain yourself with blood, add some scary shapes and props and express the pain of the undead with our most fearful fonts. It’s all so easy.

All these Halloween effects – and more! – can be found in the special Halloween section under the Create tab!

The savviest of the online scrapper artists have already discovered the secret to easy, online scrapbook success: Fancy Collages! Whether you’ve celebrated National Scrapbooking Day with us in the past or you never even knew we had these crafty frames, we have some news for you.

Junior Designer, Kelcey, spent a week furiously cutting with her digital wobble-border scissors, punching virtual holes with her cyber grommet set, and pasting together two-dimensional ribbons, sequins, and beads. The fruits of her labors are twenty (yes twenty!) new Birthday Fancy Collages for Picnik Premium members!

Raise your hand if you have a birthday. So, that’s everyone then?

We owe a big thanks to our material supplier, Plain Digital Wrapper! They enjoy a cozy corner of the online scrapbooking world where their designers compile themed kits full of digital elements (backgrounds, ribbons, confetti, paper cakes, etc.) which our designers then turn into Fancy Collages. The people of Plain Digital Wrapper have been supplying us with the beautiful treasures that we use to create crafty frames for your fabulous photos, so enjoy!

Go Premium and see the new Birthday Fancy Collages now!