June 28, 2013|By Steven Ford, Orlando Sentinel
An Orlando mobile app maker has created a unique photo- and video-sharing app that not only promises to streamline multimedia sharing but also could be beneficial for groups visiting Orlando’s theme parks.
The iOS app SnapShots [1] allows multiple users at an event to share videos and photos with other SnapShots users in real time. App users can crowd-source both photos and videos; all the participants can take part in sharing and communicating with one another; and privacy settings can create events that are either public and searchable by other SnapShots users or private and available to just select invitation-only members.
The SnapShots app's so-called "events" can be anything, of course, from birthday parties to backyard pool gatherings, trade shows to training courses for employees.
Any setting in which a group of people gather can be created as an event, said Jonathan Dantes, CEO and founder of Orlando-based SnapShots LLC, adding that it is easy to envision how the app can be used by families or other groups of people who might want to create a "Walt Disney World" event or something similar at other local theme parks.
Photos and videos shared in the SnapShots environment still can be shared to more prevalent social-media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter or even via e-mail, Dantes said, and hashtags can be used for events to make search functions easy. The app also utilizes real-time comments and push notifications.
The free app, which was released earlier this spring, is available for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users now; an Android version should be released in the fall.
Already, the app has been chosen by Apple as one of its iTunes featured app, showing just how promising it appears to tech-savvy social-media users.
In addition to creating a so-called event sharing space, SnapShots also provides an environment in which to organize related media from an activity, too, said Rainer Flor, chief technology officer and co-founder of SnapShots. Users won’t necessarily have to search their iPhone photo album for pictures from an event, for example, and then switch over to their YouTube app to find a particular supporting video file or a chat client to find a comment about the event.
Instead, for SnapShots users, anything related to the event will be stored within the single app environment for easy discovery and sharing instead of residing in the “multiple channels†of different apps, he said.
"The way we like to look at it," Flor said, "it certainly helps people organize their pictures and videos."
Flor, a 2005 University of Central Florida graduate , said the app was first conceptualized in 2011. It was launched this spring and already has close to 10,000 users.
SnapShots clearly is not the only photo- or image-sharing mobile app on the market. A host of similar features are offered by mobile apps such as SnapChat, Instagram and Hipstamatic’s Oggle. Even web-based services such as Flickr, Pinterest, Picassa and others offer some of the same media-sharing components being promoted by SnapShots.
Still the mobile media-sharing landscape is one that continues to be seen as a big money draw for advertising dollars and, therefore, continues to be picture-perfect for expansion. And for good reason, from the advertisers’ perspective.
After all, if every picture tells a story, then the one being told today is that photo- and video-sharing apps are hugely popular with smartphone users. Each user is, of course, a captive audience for each particular app used.
"We were already sharing photos and videos via MMS in the early 2000s, but today's smartphones really give the opportunity for apps to be 'smarter,' " Flor said. "What makes an app 'smarter' are not just the cool effects that you can add in a photo app, but services that can geo-track, recommend and connect on-demand. It's part of the secret sauce on what makes apps like Instagram, Vine - and hopefully SnapShots one day - so successful and popular. It's popular with advertiser as well because they've instantly got an engaged audience."
Consider some of the numbers with similar apps:
In a little more than 2 weeks after being introduced as an invite-only iOS app, Hipstamatic’s Oggle photo-sharing app accumulated more than 4 million users by the time it was opened to the public in the spring.
Another popular media-sharing app, Snapchat, was created in the fall of 2011. A little more than a year later, users had shared more than a billion images with the iOS app alone. (There’s also an Android version today.)
Of course, those kinds of numbers get the attention of the big players. Last week, Facebook Inc. made its first substantial move into the video-sharing market with the announcement of Video on Instagram. The company’s better-late-than-never venture put it in competition with Twitter and its hugely popular Vine video-sharing app.
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