Winkiwoo, part of the Eastmon Group in Glen Innes, launched just five months ago with a mission to help Facebook users to easily take the billions of photos they have uploaded to the site with them into the real world.

They have since sold 80,000 photo books and are fulfilling as many as 1000 orders a day. Users can also make "status books" containing friends' status updates. The books can be up to 20 pages each and cost $15 plus $4.99 for worldwide shipping.

The digital revolution has been kind to the Eastmon Group, but as the general manager of its innovation division, Brendon Watson, says, the 50-year-old company could be dead if it hadn't made the radical decision six years ago to "fish where the fish are".

It is a stark contrast to the fate of similarly named Eastman Kodak, which last month filed for bankruptcy protection and earlier this month announced that it would stop making digital cameras, video cameras and digital photo frames and instead license its brand to other manufacturers.

Eastmon used to run a chain of stores specialising in developing film photographs - an industry that has all but died out along with analog film technology.

Over the last several years it has shut down all of these stores and the company is now the largest printer of digital photos in Australia. It employs hundreds of people in peak periods and is the largest employer in the the Glen Innes region.

When you order a digital print or photo book from Harvey Norman, Bing Lee, Dick Simth, Big W, Camera House or Snapfish, chances are they are printed by Eastmon, which counts Australia's biggest retailers as wholesale customers.

"We like to use the terminology fish where the fish are - everyone was transitioning into online in their buying habits and it was an absolute no brainer decision that that's where everything was headed," Watson said in a phone interview.

"If you didn't react and change, you wouldn't be here."

But with Winkiwoo, launched in October last year, Eastmon Group is now selling its prints direct to the consumer.

"With digital photos, more photos are being taken than ever but in ratio less photos are being printed than ever ... until now there wasn't a way to take your memories from Facebook and put them in a nicely presented photo product," said Watson.

"It allows the customer to create and physically touch their memories rather than just having them sitting on the Facebook servers forever."

Winkiwoo launched with daily deals site Living Social Australia and quickly sold 13,000 books at $2 a pop. From there it got the attention of Groupon in Britain and sold 26,000 over there, before running deals with Groupon sites all over the world including in parts of Europe, Malaysia, Singapore and South Africa.

"It's pretty much snowballed from there," he said.

Watson said Winkiwoo used sites like Groupon to launch into 15 countries but thanks to its worldwide shipping policy has serviced over 80,000 people in 80 countries, including 200 orders sent to Afghanistan. He was initially hoping to sell 100,000 in the first year but is on track to reach that number in half the time.

"It's exciting that literally you can run a global business from anywhere; the internet allows that, technology allows that."

Watson said the ease-of-use of the product was a large factor in its success. Users install the Winkiwoo Facebook application, select which of their Facebook photos they want to include in the book, add captions, and then with a few clicks it is sent to Eastmon to print and ship.

"The other big appeal ... is you've got access to create a photo book for your friends using their photos within Facebook - so it's a great gift giving product as well," he said.