Aviary reaches 3B photos edited by 35M users

The photo-editing tools startup Aviary has just announced a few big milestones. First, it’s exceeded three billion photos edited to date. It’s also telling us it has a total of 35 million active users.

Aviary once focused on photo-editing for end users — regular, web-browsing consumers. Now, however, its focus is more on developers and giving developers tools to easily integrate photo-editing capabilities into their own apps.

For example, Twitter integrated Aviary’s photo editor when it launched a feature to compete with Instagram.

Aviary first launched its SDK back in September 2011 with a grand total of 31 partners. Today, the company said via email, its tools are used by more than 3,500 applications. And yes, mobile photo apps are a big part of that number.

Aviary hit the 1 billion photo mark a year after its SDK launched. With today’s announcement — an additional two billion photos edited over the past six months — we can clearly see the startup’s growth is accelerating:

“There are a lot of global forces at play here: increased mobile bandwidth, smartphone penetration and higher quality smartphone cameras have all contributed to a dramatic increase in photo-based communications,” writes new Aviary CEO Tobias Peggs today in a post on the company blog.

“Aviary provides simple-to-use but powerful tools to make those communications better. Our mission has always been to democratize creativity — to give everyday content creators the tools to express themselves fully. This mission still drives us everyday.”