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Photo sharing is a term given to a crop of mid-2000s websites which provide means to publish a collection of digital photos online in a centralized and organized fashion. The term can be applied to online photo galleries, as well as "photoblogs", i.e. weblogs where the journal entries are prominently centered around original images.
Photoblogging gained momentum in the early 2000s with the advent of the moblog, which provided a highly automated method of entering online journal comments via mobile phone. The introduction of cameraphones in subsequent years added the potential to post a live photograph along with the journal entry.
Not all photo sharing sites are designed to function as photoblog engines, though they usually provide means to add descriptive text for the photo as well as receive comments from other users, effectively providing the same functionality. Some photo sharing sites focus on the images as the sole material to publish, providing such features as categorization "tags", personal image groups, images in multiple sizes, minimal web-based image manipulation, online organization tools, image search, and licensing indication.
Revenue models
Photosharing sites can be broadly broken up into two groups: sites that offer photosharing for free and sites that charge consumers directly to host and share photos. Of the sites that offer free photosharing, most can be broken up into advertising-supported media plays, such as AlbumTown, Flickr, Fotolog, Fotopic, Glowfoto, MyPhotoAlbum, Ringo, Webshots and online photo finishing sites, such as ImageStation, Ofoto and Shutterfly, where photo sharing is a vehicle to sell prints or other merchandise. Paid sites typically offer subscription-based services directly to consumers and dispense with advertisements and sometimes the sale of other goods. Examples of paid sites are Phanfare, Fotki, and SmugMug. These designations are not hard and fast and some subscription sites have a limited free version. Finally, consumers can now share their photos directly from their home computers over high speed connections through peer-to-peer photosharing using applications such as Pixpo, Picasa, Qnext and PixVillage. Peer-to-peer photosharing often carries a small one-time cost for the software.
Media plays
Monetizing the sharing of photos through advertising pre-supposes a large degree of third party interest in consumer photos. Media plays such as typically have a large number of albums that are wide open for public viewing and facilities to tag images across all registered users for quick global search. Other sites allow visitors to share pictures of famous people.
Online photo finishing
Because printing at home for consumers is both a time consuming and expensive task, a number of companies such as Shutterfly offer the ability to create high quality prints from digital photos, printed on traditional photographic paper. Typically the customer uploads their digital photos to the site and then orders prints and gifts which are then delivered by mail. To facilitate the sale of prints and gifts to family and friends, these sites typically offer a limited form of photo sharing. Because the primary revenue model is to sell the consumer back their digital information in the form of prints and gifts, the online albums typically do not allow friends and family to download the full size original images. Nevertheless, because the primary revenue model of the printing sites is to sell prints and gifts, the photosharing is free and hence attractive to many consumers.
Subscription-based photo sharing
For consumers who want high quality photo sharing without the distraction of advertisements or the necessity of selling prints and gifts to pay for the sharing, subscription based photo sharing is the natural answer. The primary revenue model to pay for the sharing is subscription revenue, paid directly by the consumer to the photo sharing company. Examples of subscription-based photo sharing sites are Phanfare, Fotki, smugmug, and Webshots. The benefits of paid sharing to consumers are that the company can offer greater guarantees about keeping the photos online and allow friends and family to download the fullsize originals. Typically no ads are allowed on sites created through paid photosharing since the presence of ads would remove one of the large distinguishing characteristics of those services.
Peer-to-peer photosharing
With the introduction of high speed connections directly to homes (broadband), it is feasible to serve you pictures and movies without going through a central service. The advantages to peer-to-peer sharing are reduced hosting costs and no loss of control to a central service. The downsides are that the consumer does not get the benefit of offsite backup, consumer ISPs often prohibit the serving of content both by contract and through the implementation of network filtering, and there are few quality guarantees for recipients. However, there are typically no direct consumer costs beyond the purchase of the initial software, provided the consumer already has a computer with the photos at home on a high speed connection. Examples of free private P2P photo sharing include Qnext, PixVillage, PiXPO, Picasa, and FotoSwap.
See also
"Photo sharing"