The Web Photo Sharing Site Faceoff
Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus.
In this post we profile the red hot photo sharing space, where the blogosphere darling Flickr is actually trailing in the mass market. Back in June, Hitwise posted their online photo market statistics - which showed Photobucket with a huge market lead at #1 and Flickr at #6. A lot of Photobucket's lead is due to its high usage in MySpace pages - 56% of Photobucket's traffic is from MySpace, according to Hitwise. So marketing and being part of a large ecosystem are crucial. But also important is having simple and easy to use features. So we present here a feature-by-feature comparison and also highlight areas where particular services stand out from the pack.
Feature Comparison of Photo Sharing Sites
In the table below (which incidentally we did using Zoho Sheet, Zoho's online spreadsheet) we list companies from the Hitwise article as well as some additional 'web 2.0' photo sharing players.
Note that for Alexa rank we highlighted the top 5 scores - Flickr, Photobucket, Webshots, Kodakgallery, Pbase.
Pros and Cons of each Photo Sharing Site
|
|
Pros |
Cons |
|
Flickr (owned by Yahoo!) |
innovative, tons of cool features, drag and drop, sharing, RSS, badges, clustering |
difficult to use for non tech savvy |
|
simple, limited functionality, badges |
perhaps too simple, annoying ads, no sharing and social web features |
|
|
professional interface, targeting main stream |
no sharing and social web features |
|
|
simple, has all the basic functions, each album has unique URL |
no sharing and social web features |
|
|
Pbase (not in the same space) |
stunning professional photography, gallery-based implementation, simple |
no sharing and social web features |
|
Picasa (not in the same space yet - owned by Google) |
hard to say because it is not apples to apples, but editing photos is nice |
basically not (yet) in the same space, not really web-based |
|
music associated with albums, lots of badge options |
unbearably annoying ads during sign up, clubs instead of groups, does not seem intuitive |
|
|
professional interface, targeting mainstream |
no sharing and social web features |
|
|
Slide (not in the same space) |
runs on top of Flickr, Photobucket, etc. plugs into MySpace, blogs, etc. Fills nice niche within the space. |
focused on making slideshows (it's a limitation, if you want to consider this service as a contender). |
|
professional interface, a lot of album options, well thought through |
not free |
|
|
professional interface, targeting mainstream |
no sharing and social web features |
|
|
has lots of social web photo features |
ads, somewhat clunky, no tags (at least we could not find them) |
|
|
conceptually interesting, some innovative UI, uses OpenID for login. |
confirmation image gives you instant headache; no geography-only tag cloud; the maps are cool, but not useful |
|
|
very well designed, has the most social web features |
somewhat slow, lacks printing ability |
Notes
Where's Yahoo! Photos? We excluded Yahoo! Photos from this comparison because we did not have access to the new Yahoo! Photos beta, so we felt it would be unfair to review it based on the old site.
The browser twist The social browser Flock has delivered two direct integrations with Flickr and Photobucket. What is interesting (and also somewhat confusing) is that Flock has made a special version to be distributed to Photobucket users. It is difficult to say what impact this deal has had on the photo sharing market so far, but it is likely that browser integration is going to play a major role in the future.
Conclusion
Firstly, we do not have a single online photo market. There is still a clear mainstream market led by KodakGallery and Yahoo! Photos. This market is basically focused on upload/album/print capabilities - and has little to none social aspects.
On the other hand, Flickr is a clear leader in the social photo sharing market. It has unmatched features, usability and community.
However the overall leader in the photo sharing market in general, and a good mix between mainstream and social web, is Photobucket. They have been able to add just enough social features, without getting too complex or fancy, to convert a lot of people from traditional photo sharing sites.
How is it all going to end up and who is going to win in this market? Time will tell, but it is likely we will end up having fewer players - and those that stick around will have a blend of features from the current mainstream and 'social web' camps. As for the bloggers' favorite, Flickr, the road to mainstream acceptance for Flickr is paved with tough competition and the need to simplify.
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Zooomr has an upload client.jUploadr In your chart you show zooomr as having a client but you mention no upload client as a con in your table of pros and cons. I would like to mention that zooomr is still a baby and I'm sure a lot of cool features such as maps will be tying into other future features. zooomr is very exciting to watch.
You're right egorgry, that was an oversight in the Pros and Cons table. I've now removed that bit from there.
And I agree, Zoomr is very promising - as we noted in the table.
I think I largely agree with your projections but I would add 2 important areas of future growth for any social photosharing sites that not many people are talking about: mobile space and the international market. It's very interesting to observe how these numbers fluctuate if you look into to these markets and I think that's where the next frontier lies for growth. Which player will come to dominate these spaces with the right balance of ease-of-use and features (and of course "word-of-mouse" marketing) will tip the playing field.
I wanted to create a site in this market but was intimidated by (then newcomer) Flickr's featureset. I was in talks to buy imageshare.com and everything. C'est la vie.
You do realize that Picasa does join this space with Picasa Web Albums. It's still pretty beta, but it works well and deserves a spot, I would say.
Fotki is yet another service that offers unlimited storage and multiple uploading tools, unlike others. Quite nifty.
Nice overview though.
Chris,
As we said in the post, Picasa is not YET in the same space.
We could not get access to the beta program to try it, but hopefully, by the time next post on the topic is due, it will be ready and covered.
Alex
Zoto has printing through a partnership with Qoop. We added this feature in April of this year.
Thanks for the inclusion!
Nice review. Another pro of kodakgallery is that it allows you to keep track of your viewing invitations, and see who has actually logged in and viewed your photos. This visitor tracking is a rare feature among photo sharing sites.
Like the other comments, I would have liked to see you comment on some newer features such as geotagging and upload by email. Also a big con of some of the sites you mentioned is limited uploading, or other space limitations. I'm also curious why you didn't include the newly updated AOL photos.
WHY I SWITCHED TO PHOTOBUCKET:
Simply because it's the only one to allow me to post my 300 pictures album! You are forgeting that. Flickr has a limit of 250 photos and only three albuns for free accounts. Photobucket has a limit of 1GB PER ALBUM, no limits for number of albuns and 10GB of bandwidth per month, wich is a lot of bandwidth.
It was difficult to capture all the features, we knew we are going to miss some, and so it is great to see all of you bringing things up that matter to you.
Marco's comment is actually very important, and this is something that we did not notice while doing the research. Another strong reason for Photobucket's lead.
Alex
Hey, thank you much for including Zooomr (three o's instead of two) in your comparison review. A couple of quick clarifications. We do actually have tags for photos as well as RSS feeds.
We also do have an API but our documentation is not finished on it yet. We hope to have it released shortly.
Thank you again for including us in your review.
Tom
Some fair comments altho i feel Flickr is quite Easy & a joy to use. In fact i think for a lot of folks who are into Photgraphy & maybe just learning to use computers & the internet that it's a great experience!
Plus the Web2.0 Social Networking aspect is Flickr's Ace in the hole!!
not to slag Photobucket cuz i don't know much about it but it does seem to derive a lot of its Numbers from dumping photos up to MySpace as U pointed out.
Another strong feature of Flickr U mentioned that doesn't always receive press is the ability to quickly & easily Blog fantastic Photos which gives your Blog great Visual Images!
Cheers! Billy ;))
Fixed the Zooomr spelling in the table - thanks Tom.
Conclusion
Firstly, we do not have single online photo market.
This should be:
Conclusion
Firstly, we do not have a single online photo market.
Picasa web albums are fantastic if all you want to do is share photos with friends and family. It's Google-fast in the speed of photo retrieval - I can skim from one 2MB photo to the next in a slideshow in about a second or two with whatever magic thing Google does to make it appear so quick. It integrates into the Picasa app (and iPhoto now) very simply. Highly recommend it unless you're really interested in tagging and social groups.
YAFRO was the very BEST site for sharing photos with social interaction. When Yafro switched servers 'they' apparently forgot what made Yafro so addictive, that is, the commentary and email features. Today Yafro is, sadly, a pale imitation of what it was. If anyone knows of a site with similar features to those of Yafro( a year ago) I'd appreciate hearing about it. None of the above compare.
What about pictures.aol.com? This is a very full featured site with intergration with iPhoto for Macs and numerous applications on the PC.
Wow, you think Flickr is hard to use for non-technical people? I suspect that the division between the tech-savvy and the non-tech people in cases like this can be chalked up to basic English literacy. If you want to make something using the API I guess you need to know how to program, but if you want to do things like create links to tag based groups (so that a free user can have more than 3 albums) or get around their DRM, all you have to do is spend an afternoon reading the forums.
Thanks Bruce, fixed.
I've actually been using Sony's ImageStation site for years.
There don't appear to be any limits on file sizes or number of photos you can add.
Also, if you're interested in online image editors (especially ones that plug into online photo storage sites) you might want to read my post comparing 10 of the leading products.
you forgot fotolog (http://www.fotolog.com/)
photos + social networking + groups + mobile
why no bubbleshare?
Great list and nice analysis. I think, as always, the balance between simplicity and power is tough. (I work for tabblo (no ads, unlimited storage, etc.) and we're constantly struggling to strike the right balance).
You are right that Yahoo Photos is a mainstream player, but with its latest release it also looks like it is creeping towards the social space more and more -- settings for public photos and improved messaging around sharing with groups.
I think soxiam is right on -- lots of opportunity outside of North America. I wish more people were talking about that as well.
What is the most appropriate site for an artist to upload art images to? So that they cannot be downloaded without permission, and the image quality high?
Why not use Zoho Sheet's capability to embed the actual spreadsheet instead of just an image?
Great article, otherwise. Thanks.
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