In the age of touch-screen gadgets permanently linked to the Internet, photo sharing has moved well beyond social networking Web sites. In the past, people would meet up, take photos and post them on Facebook. Now, users don’t only share pictures of themselves, but snap photos of everyday objects or events and post them online.
It can be anything: a stunning view caught on the street as they head to work, something they just bought or even a simple breakfast. Anything and everything that can be captured is uploaded and shared in an instant. After the success of Instagram, a photo-sharing application that had more than seven million users before it turned a year old, photo sharing is on its way to being the next big thing after social networking.
Photography applications often dominate the top 25 applications sold in app stores, and usually rank second or third after games and social networking apps. Ironically, about half of the applications offer old photo effects that simulate film, such as black and white, sepia or lomography. A photo application called IncrediBooth mimics instant photo-booths, producing black-and-white photo strips.
Kristine Heryanto was one of the early Instagram users, and is followed by more than 40,000 people on the Web site. “I like the app because it has nice filters, is easy to use and it’s free,” she said.
Kristine said she was addicted to Instagram because she could pick up tips from fellow users about applications for photo editing.
Photo sharing on a specific application like Instagram lets users know what they can expect, which is not always the case on social networking Web sites.
“On Facebook, people don’t care if we post good photos or not,” she said. On Instagram, there is a feature to mark pictures as favorites. The more marks a photo gets, the better its chance to get into the “Popular” section.
Gery Simbolon, who is developing a photo-sharing application for fashion at pakaiapa.com, said that people would always love sharing pictures.
“Even in the analog era, people showed off photo albums to their relatives and friends,” he said.
With photo-sharing applications on smartphones expanding the scope of posting to Facebook and Twitter, more people are likely to join the ranks of photo-sharers.
Photo-sharing apps are especially interesting to users because they can touch up their photos instantly, Gery said. Photoshop used to be required to make alterations, which was an expensive and often difficult proposition for many people. This is partially what prompted Gery to develop his photo-sharing application, which will be launched on September.
To keep you in the loop, we list some of the hottest photo-sharing applications. Check them out and have fun!
Instagram turns your dull photos into artsy, saturated pictures with a few simple clicks.
The fastest-growing photography app is now looking at more than 150 million photos, which are shared by more than seven million users (it grew by two million users in the past two months alone).
The beauty of Instagram lies in its simplicity, as it’s very easy to figure out. After you download the app, which is only available on Apple’s iOS gadgets, you can immediately take pictures and share them.
Information: Free app, only available on iPhone and iPod Touch.
Foodspotting
Can photos replace reviews? Foodspotting thinks so. It aims to be a visual guide for foodies worldwide to find restaurants they might like. This app tries to counter the lack of detailed description in food reviews, and show food like it is. It also automatically records the restaurant’s location via geotag, and you can bookmark mouthwatering pictures and view them later.
There is a crucial downside: If Foodspotting is not popular in your neighborhood you won’t be able to find pictures from local restaurants, which defeats the whole purpose.
Information: Free app, available on the Web, iPhone and Android.
Color
Meet up with friends, take photos and appoint someone to upload them on Facebook. Color aims to make photo sharing easy by letting users post photos to their group of friends immediately. It also detects photos from other people within a distance of 100 feet from you. You won’t miss a single photo from an event — as long as they post it on Color too, of course.
Information: Free app, available on iPhone and Android.
Pool Party
Google seems to take photo sharing seriously by running two different photo-sharing applications. Pool Party is a photo-sharing service developed by Slide, a company that Google bought a while back. It’s a private photo-sharing app in that you can only share pictures with preferred members. A Pool is a group of friends with whom you can share your pictures, and the party, of course, refers to the event where the photos were taken.
Information: Free app, currently in beta and invite only, available on the Web, iPhone and Android.
Path
If you’re really concerned about who you share your photos with, you may want to consider using Path. The friend-ing system is limited to your database of e-mail addresses and phone numbers.
Users can tag pictures with names, places and things with a feature that lets users know when someone has seen their photos. Path also provides a feature to chat. Path seems serious in respecting user privacy, as the friendship total is limited to 50 people.
Information: Free app, available on the Web, iPhone, e-mail or Facebook.
Photovine
This application just went live last month, and it is by far the most comprehensive photo-sharing application around. The idea of Photovine is to get users to post thematic photos based on the “vine” that they like. It can be football, donuts, mosques, Buddha, Mini-Coopers or even whatever happens to be in front of you.
You can enjoy thematic pictures submitted by strangers to discover users other than the friends that you already follow. From a business point of view, Photovine has the potential to become an engaging tool for brand campaigns because people can do more than just follow — they can also post a picture about a theme or a cause they care about.
Information: Free app, only available on iPhone, currently only at the US App Store.
No comments:
Post a Comment