About photo sharing

Why photo sharing is not the next dot com bubble thing

Blog Author — Sat, 16 Apr 2005 11:02:00 GMT

Some people are wondering if recent photo sharing companies acquisition (Flickr, Snapfish, Photosite, Heypix!) are due to the "2000 internet bubble revival" or if this photo sharing application could lead to a real business model. I think photo sharing gets a true business model. Let me show you why.

First, digital photo camera sales have strongly increased this last 3 years, which means many people have just started with digital photo. This trend is still going up (think about camera phones as well).

Second, since the blogging community has emerged, people have discovered photoblogs, which is the first photo sharing step. It is really easy to share digital photos on your blogs (I recommend you to have a look at the Typepad blogging solution if you don't get your blog yet). Camera phone users are even sending their digital photos to their moblogs in real time, just to offer their readers real time photo sharing.

Is online photo sharing such a hit for the moment ? well, I can't say photo sharing is as popular as the messenger application is. But it will be, for sure. Since the creation of photography, people have always show their photos to their friends, family, colleagues, etc. How many times did you go at a family dinner where your mother ask you to see your last holiday trip photographies ?

Now photography is digital, and you will probably get your mother happy if you can show her your digital photos. But you will need online photo sharing for that.

So photo sharing should be the next killer application. The photo sharing business model has not been proved yet, it is true. But it will. No matter how because a killer application is always profitable. As a crashy entrepreneur told me one day : "get customers first, then think how to make them profitable..."

Flickr is not the last internet bubble company, but the first real photo sharing success in the US...and PixVillage could be the next one :-)

Europe still makes entrepreneurs !

Blog Author — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 08:18:00 GMT

Answering Loic Lemeur's post about the Yahoo acquisition of Flickr (this social network / web-based online photo sharing), I strongly recommend you to have a look at PixVillage, our software application dedicated to online photo sharing. Be sure we will do our best to succeed in this fast growing/competitve business :)

Online photo sharing, the next killer application ?

Blog Author — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 18:58:00 GMT

Following the Yahoo acquisition of Flickr photo sharing service, the HP - Snapfish deal and the Heypix! - Cnet deal, it seems that web portals and digital camera manufacturers consider photo sharing as a killer application.

Digital photos amateurs have started with online photo sharing few yeas ago. Now millions of photos are publicly or privately displayed over the worldwide web while digital cameras sales have soared during this period. It is obvious that photo sharing is a way to recruit end users and even "networks of end-users". Once you grab a social hub, you will get his friends, family, etc.

At the beginning, Ofoto and Webshots were "traditional" web based services. Then Flickr has mixed social networking recruitment capabilities with photo sharing features, still as a web based service. Last (but not least) PixVillage brings kind of social networking (end users build their private networks the same way MSN Messenger do it) with P2P technology, which means digital photos are stored on the end-user PC and uploaded directly on their authorized contacts PC hard drive.

What will be photo sharing in the coming months ? hard to say, but one sure thing is that web based services will face storage and bandwith issues while their network is growing. Not P2P decentralized networks such as PixVillage. Online photo sharing could stay a free offer thanks to Pixvillage for end-users only benefit...

What is online photo sharing

Blog Author — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 16:41:00 GMT

We can sort online photo sharing into 2 main categories :

1) Web based

Web based online photo sharing is a centralized server application allowing end users to upload photos from their PC to the company servers. Photos are stored and published from the central servers to the end users who cannot get back and store the shared photos on their PC. This is a "one to many" process. Online photo sharing services, photoblogs services and photos printing services are all web based. Main players are Ofoto, Snapfish or Flickr.

2) Software

Softwares dedicated to online photo sharing are decentralized applications with direct connections (photos transfer) between 2 users . This is a peer-to-peer (P2P) application that enables end users to upload directly their photos from their PC to their peers' PC. No intermediary servers. Most of software applications feature a "simple P2P photo sharing" process (Pixpo, Photoleap) but PixVillage features "Real P2P photo sharing" which increases the global efficiency of the network.