Reuters ran an article last week talking about how traditional photo sharing services are having a run for their money because users of social networking services are happy sharing photos over there.
Very true! Infact, this is a repeat of the classic dilemma of reinvent or perish. The basic question to answer is – “Why do people share photos”? Two answers come to mind:
1) To show it to friends and family
2) For archiving, just in case you lose your hard drive full of photos
As all your friends move to social network and you get more connected online, naturally sharing photos on a social service starts making a lot of sense. Why would you want to upload your photos on another site and send links around when you can just upload your photos and the social site takes care of letting your friends know about it.
As a result photo services are left with no other option but to turn more social. However, the good news is that photos are still relatively dumb creatures and there hasn’t been much done to unleash the full power of a network of photos. So there is plenty of room for innovation and a lot of value addition that can be done to turn photo sharing into an activity, more entertaining than it has ever been.
That is what we are trying to do with photo sharing at lifeblob – building a more intelligent tool that understands how photos are connected and helps you navigate through them.
