PicsArt Expands Silicon Valley Presence; Names Former Zynga Exec Wilson Kriegel CRO and GM of US Operations

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Aug. 25, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- PicsArt Inc, developer and publisher of the wildly popular PicsArt mobile photo editing and drawing app, today announced internet and mobile industry veteran Wilson Kriegel will be leading the company's US operations and worldwide revenues, with a special eye on market opportunities in Asia, as Chief Revenue Officer and General Manager of US Operations from a new San Francisco office.

The appointment comes as PicsArt—a free image editing app that combines the simplicity of Instagram with the full-featured capabilities of Photoshop—continues to experience rapid growth and expansion. The app boasts nearly 50 million active monthly users and a surge of 40 million new installs since February for a total of 155 million installs across Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and most recently Windows 8.1 PCs and tablets. PicsArt regularly appears as a top free app on all the app store charts.

Wilson Kriegel brings 15 years of entrepreneurial and executive experience across multiple Internet and mobile start-ups. Most recently, he served as President & COO of Paltalk, the largest and highly profitable live topic, content-based and cross-platform video and chat community. Prior to this, he was CRO of OMGPOP/Zynga, the developer of the global hit franchise "Draw Something". OMGPOP was acquired by Zynga in 2012 for $210 Million.

"After enjoying such tremendous organic growth, we're excited to have brought aboard Wilson Kriegel who has built an impressive career taking young web and mobile companies to the next level," said Hovhannes Avoyan, CEO at PicsArt Inc. "By adding Mr. Kriegel to the team and investing more in app functionality, community growth, business development, product marketing and new hires, we intend to build on our existing successes and show people just how far we can go."

At PicsArt, Kriegel will work to accelerate worldwide growth of the popular mobile photo app's usership through various types of partnerships, marketing efforts and monetization of the platform and products. This includes attracting new media and brand partners to elevate the level of social engagement and interest/category-based sharing and following among PicsArt's large community base of 18 million creatives who spend an average of 20 minutes per session creating and sharing their artistic images. PicsArt will continue to heavily invest in delivering new product functionality and features to optimize user engagement, creation and sharing, and will accelerate its hiring accordingly.

"I'm very excited to join PicsArt's talented team and help accelerate growth for such a popular product," said Wilson Kriegel, PicsArt's newly-named Chief Revenue Officer and General Manager of US Operations. "PicsArt is differentiated because of its focus on creation and sharing, not just capturing moments. We're going to continue focusing heavily on the social tools, usability, and partnerships that amplify this. It's still early, and the product and business have tremendous opportunities and upside."

Kriegel's prior experience includes executive posts at MMO freemium publisher Outspark (which was acquired by Gamigo in 2013), Curse, Inc. (now the world's largest MMORPG web destination with nearly 30 million unique visitors per month and another recent $16 Million in funding), in-game advertising network IGA Worldwide, GameTimeNation, and NewPower Co., an Enron subsidiary that went public in 2000 raising $500 Million.

For more on PicsArt, its community of users, and samples of their work, visit picsart.com.

About PicsArt
PicsArt is a free and full-featured photo editing and drawing mobile app available on Android, iOS and Windows Phone. Based in Mountain View, Calif., the app is also home to the largest art-based mobile social network of more than 18 million artists, which allows users to connect with and inspire one another from anywhere in the world. The app has been installed more than 155 million times and continues to expand and improve, so anyone can unleash their creativity and become a great artist.

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SOURCE PicsArt Inc

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