teng time

I was catching up on some social media news today on Mashable and this post gave me the warm and fuzzies about a possible marriage between Facebook and a photo sharing site.  Not that it’s actually going to happen, but Myspace has partnered with HP for photo printing so maybe Facebook may follow suit especially if it’s a viable way to grow the business.  As an FB fan I’m rooting for it.

I’ve been in several short-term, non-committed relationships with photo sharing sites with lackluster results.  Consequently I’m behind on the times in regards to photo sharing.  I went from Webshots to Sony Imagestation (this site no longer exists but the print quality was great) and then reluctantly back to Webshots (that desktop upload app is horrid).  Fiddled with Picasa.  Shutterfly and Kodak had no viewing options for resolution.  (For some reason I missed the Flickr wagon altogether.)  And then gave up and just uploaded on Facebook because it’s super easy to upload and share photos (as evidenced by their milestone of a total of 10 billion photos posted.)  Call me a snob, but a 600 x 400 snapshot might be fine for coy poses at the bar, but it just doesn’t do Dave Grohl’s rock pose justice.  Or snow capped mountains or something majestic-like.  And can we really be bothered to upload photos to multiple sites just to share and just to print?  Apparently I’ve succumbed to that for a while but have become very disinclined to make prints.

Mashable’s suggestion that Facebook should look at acquiring/partnering with Smugmug sounds great to me.  I finally checked it out and it definitely scores high on the sexy factor.  It has easy adjustments to view photos at different resolutions, quick thumbnail navigation and one of the best slideshow layouts I’ve seen – BUT for $39.95 a year.  Flickr seems like the only other worthwhile option at this point and looking pretty good.  Versatile organization features and built-in Picnik editing kind of win me over.  Especially if I can intergrate it into the blog with a wordpress plug-in (winner!).  The everyman’s blogging platform and photostream working together. Until the day Facebook actually integrates photo sharing and prints, I’ll be on my laptop uploading photos to multiple sites.

UPDATE: (12/23/08)

The basic and FREE Flickr account didn’t keep me satisfied for long.  Due to my large photo collection I had to be able to organize my photos into more than 3 sets as well as upload over the free limit of 50 mb per month.  I was fast approaching my 50 mb quota within a month and before Christmas no less!  Understandably high volume during the Holidays.  Since I’ve had my digital SLR (a Nikon D40 starter) and become the house photog for many family/friends’ events it’s definitely been high volume.  And what kind of aspiring photographer would I be without a Flickr pro account, right?  So I went for the one year pro account for $24.95.  Which comes out to be about $2.08 per month.  Not bad for unlimited uploads and sets.

I’m really excited to explore all of the Flickr groups out there.  After some perusing I realized that’s the reason why Flickr has been so popular and will continue to grow its base – community.  In Web 2.0 community bonds foster longevity.  The community makes Flickr what it is, not the other way around.  As an outsider I had always thought of Flickr as a place to store and share your photos.  Now I see that it is first a social networking site based on photo sharing, which is a much more interesting concept.  After I get my back catalogue uploaded I’ll be ready to further explore the community and start connecting!