Images are important elements of both personal and professional publishing: They visualize information, decorate blog posts and enliven Facebook profiles. Although they are ubiquitous, up until now they’ve only been able to statically support what is probably the internet’s most important asset: the link. At NEXT Berlin 2012, Ulla-Maaria Engeström presented a technology with the potential to change all that: Thinglink.

The service allows users to put links to websites, music or videos on top of their images – a feature supporting a variety of applications ranging from business to education and art, as Thinglink founder and CEO Engeström presented in her keynote talk.

“It turns the web upside down: Images are not only illustrations next to the text anymore, but are actually the platform on which you serve the text”, she explained and added, “We believe that in a couple of years, when you move your mouse over an image and nothing happens, you’ll be baffled.”