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Virtual graffiti app Stiktu gets worldwide release

The social augmented reality app allows users to add text, paint, and other things to images and share them with other users, as well as friends on Facebook and Twitter.

Steven Musil Night Editor / News
Steven Musil is the night news editor at CNET News. He's been hooked on tech since learning BASIC in the late '70s. When not cleaning up after his daughter and son, Steven can be found pedaling around the San Francisco Bay Area. Before joining CNET in 2000, Steven spent 10 years at various Bay Area newspapers.
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Stiktu in action. Screenshot by Steven Musil/CNET

Opening a new frontier of virtual graffiti, the social augmented reality app Stiktu is now available worldwide, allowing users to tag and add content to any scannable image.

Inspired by street artists, the app allows iOS and Android smartphone users to snap photos of just about anything and then add text, paint, stickers, or whatever their imagination suggests. Additionally, when a tagged image is scanned by another user, that person can see what others have created with the scanned image.

Users can then publish and share their art with other Stiktu users, as well as with friends on Facebook and Twitter. The app also features social elements that allow users to connect by discovering, liking, sharing, and commenting on interesting posts.

The app, which was launched in Europe last year by augmented reality company Layar, is designed to "remix the real world," the company says.

"With Stiktu we really put the power of augmented reality in the hands of the people," Raimo van der Klein, co-founder of Layar, said in a company blog. "Stiktu opens tremendous new possibilities to interact with the physical world around us. At Layar, we want to democratize space and Stiktu is the app to help us reach that mission."