This is the fifth post in our series looking at how the user experience (UX) of consuming - and producing - media is changing with the increasing popularity of devices other than the PC. So far we've looked at music on smartphones, news apps on the iPad, RSS Readers on smartphones and online radio in cars.

The camera has been a staple of the technology industry since the 19th century. Nowadays, with the huge popularity of smartphones, more people carry and use a camera than ever before. The latest model iPhone - the iPhone 4 - has a 5 megapixel camera, which is more than sufficient for the casual photographer.

As smartphones integrate ever more powerful cameras, what can the traditional camera companies do to compete? While there will always be a market for high-end cameras - specialist devices used by professional photographers - it's that middle and lower end market which is slipping away from the likes of Kodak, Canon, Olympus, Sony and Nikon.

Artefact has created a concept camera for the smartphone age, called the WVIL. That acronym stands for Wireless Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens. As you can see from the photo above, it looks like a normal camera. One obvious difference is that it detaches in two, one part looking very much like a modern day smartphone. Artefact further describes the WVIL as a "new architecture that combines the lens and sensor together into one wireless unit."

The founders of Artefact, Gavin Kelly and Rob Girling, told me that this concept camera gave them "an opportunity to re-think how to interact with our cameras." In the video below, you can see how touchscreen technology is used to provide a new way to interact with your photos. It essentially brings the smartphone user experience to the camera.

This isn't entirely unique, because some high-end cameras - such as the Canon SD3500 - have touchscreen controls. Plus newer digital cameras often have input sensors (e.g. accelerometers, gyroscopes). However, Artefact takes these features a step further, for example by adding apps and social functionality.

Artefact is envisaging new types of software and apps for their camera. Such as software that teaches you better photography by giving you real-time coaching tips. This would use the sensors in the camera, so it knows what you're doing and can then guide you to use a certain technique or feature if appropriate.

Artefact's camera is, like the popular smartphones, built on a software platform that uses touchscreen technology. Other types of apps that Artefact foresees include apps that post-process photos, share images and enhance the camera's functionality.

Finally, this concept brings the social media functionality that smartphones famously have and deposits it into a digital camera. According to Artefact, current digital cameras have limited social functionality.

For power users of photography, having the ability to manipulate and share photos direct from the camera does seem like a compelling feature. The general consumer is already well served currently by apps like Instagram and Foodspotting, so this wouldn't be so compelling to them. Arguably smartphones still have the edge in innovation too, for example with an app like Color that mixes social networking and photography in a new and potentially disruptive way. Also see Camera+, a new photo enhancement app for smartphones.

Will Artefact's SmartCam be implemented by a camera company? The founders told me that early discussions are under way, including with companies not currently in the camera market.

Whether or not this concept - or something like it - is implemented, the current digital camera market seems ripe for innovation. It has to innovate, because the newest smartphones have sophisticated cameras which are 'good enough' for the general consumer. What do you think of Artefact's concept, would it fly with you?

Color has now launched in private beta around the concept of visual Facebook status updates, called "visits." We explore the new color and its evolution below.

Here is what Color has become: a means of posting 30-second soundless status update videos to Facebook. Color does not like to refer to these status updates as video but for lack of a better word on how to describe moving pictures in the digital age, that is what it is. The way Color wants to think of it is instead of using words to update for Facebook status, you will use these visits to show what is around you. A live broadcast to Facebook with the option of adding a caption. It is not a two-way communications portal or a way to do long form live video from a mobile device, like Qik. It is fairly simple, just a 30-second visual feed of your surroundings.

Color still attaches itself to location. On Android devices the app will prompt users to turn on GPS so the app can work more efficiently. On iOS it will prompt to make sure that location services are turned on. Once launched and attached to Facebook, Color will prompt users to post a photo or a visit. That will then pop up in the Facebook newsfeed as "Live From (Location)." It seems that a lot of the back-end systems for Color are alive and well, what CEO Bill Nguyen described as Color being a "research and data company" when ReadWriteWeb had an in-depth interview with him shortly after the funding announcement. If Color is not careful it is going to step in some of Facebook's privacy controversies, especially around a sensitive issue like location.

Color will also be integrated into Facebook's Timeline feature, whenever that happens to launch (now more than two months overdue). Within the app itself, there is a feed of all your friends' pictures that have been recently posted to their walls. Not just friends' visits, all recent photo activity. There is also a personal timeline of all your activity, from visits you made to pictures you have posted to pictures that you have been tagged in.

Color uses an aggressive push notifications system as well, one that we turned off on both Android and iOS (on an iPad 2) about two minutes after installing the app. The notification sounds like a doorbell and comes whenever a person hosts a live visit.

Cold Start, Lean Startup & Network Effects

One of the problems that Color had when it first launched was the "cold start" problem. It did not have the network effect (attract more users which in turn further develop the platform which attracts more users) from the beginning and was more or less just another app to most users. One that they did not understand. The fact that it had a terrible and confusing user interface did not help Color's cause.

Color has lost two of its three super star founders leaders since it launched. In July, ReadWriteWeb's Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote about how it was more or less a failure of the Lean Startup philosophy and CEO Bill Nguyen has been referred to as a "the boy in the bubble" that is really good at making money for venture capitalists.

We liked the concept of Color when it was announced and our founder Richard MacManus said that it had the potential to be as big as Twitter. "That wasn't my finest hour in analysis," MacManus said.

Color will eventually tie itself to Facebook's open social graph, which the company said was going to happen later this month. So, the elastic, implicit social graph has been completely abandoned.

Update 10:10 p.m. EST Dec. 1, 2012:

There was a bit of miscommunication with Color as to the nature of the elastic graph. We asked during our preview if the Color was going to still have the "implicit" graph. At the time, Color said no. What they meant was that this preview version would not have the implicit (or "elastic") graph but that when Color comes back out of private beta, the implicit data connections would return. We will be dutiful in explaining how that process works when Color launches to the public once again. Color also noted that while it will be coming out of private beta soon, it cannot speak for Facebook as to when the open graph will be made available to the public. We also noted above that two of the three super star "leaders" (not founders) had left the company.

Facebook creates implicit data but it uses it more for its own purposes. Color will do that as well, though in a naturally different way now that it is tied to the explicit social graph of Facebook, augmenting original idea of implicit data (having similar data points to a person in a similar location taking similar pictures). Attaching Color to Facebook will certainly help with the cold start problem but some people may not see the visit as anything fundamentally different from the fairly simple act of uploading a video taken with a smartphone camera to Facebook.

Does Color have a chance? With funding in the bank, it can certainly pivot again if it needs to (if it has talent left at that point). Let us know what you think about the fundamental nature of the visit in the comments. The video that is not a video but rather a real-time broadcast of your surroundings posted to Facebook.

This is the fifth post in our series looking at how the user experience (UX) of consuming - and producing - media is changing with the increasing popularity of devices other than the PC. So far we've looked at music on smartphones, news apps on the iPad, RSS Readers on smartphones and online radio in cars.

As smartphones integrate ever more powerful cameras, what can the traditional camera companies do to compete? While there will always be a market for high-end cameras - specialist devices used by professional photographers - it's that middle and lower end market which is slipping away from the likes of Kodak, Canon, Olympus, Sony and Nikon.

Artefact has created a concept camera for the smartphone age, called the WVIL. That acronym stands for Wireless Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens. As you can see from the photo above, it looks like a normal camera. One obvious difference is that it detaches in two, one part looking very much like a modern day smartphone. Artefact further describes the WVIL as a "new architecture that combines the lens and sensor together into one wireless unit."

The founders of Artefact, Gavin Kelly and Rob Girling, told me that this concept camera gave them "an opportunity to re-think how to interact with our cameras." In the video below, you can see how touchscreen technology is used to provide a new way to interact with your photos. It essentially brings the smartphone user experience to the camera.

This isn't entirely unique, because some high-end cameras - such as the Canon SD3500 - have touchscreen controls. Plus newer digital cameras often have input sensors (e.g. accelerometers, gyroscopes). However, Artefact takes these features a step further, for example by adding apps and social functionality.

Artefact is envisaging new types of software and apps for their camera. Such as software that teaches you better photography by giving you real-time coaching tips. This would use the sensors in the camera, so it knows what you're doing and can then guide you to use a certain technique or feature if appropriate.

Artefact's camera is, like the popular smartphones, built on a software platform that uses touchscreen technology. Other types of apps that Artefact foresees include apps that post-process photos, share images and enhance the camera's functionality.

Finally, this concept brings the social media functionality that smartphones famously have and deposits it into a digital camera. According to Artefact, current digital cameras have limited social functionality.

For power users of photography, having the ability to manipulate and share photos direct from the camera does seem like a compelling feature. The general consumer is already well served currently by apps like Instagram and Foodspotting, so this wouldn't be so compelling to them. Arguably smartphones still have the edge in innovation too, for example with an app like Color that mixes social networking and photography in a new and potentially disruptive way. Also see Camera+, a new photo enhancement app for smartphones.

Will Artefact's SmartCam be implemented by a camera company? The founders told me that early discussions are under way, including with companies not currently in the camera market.

Whether or not this concept - or something like it - is implemented, the current digital camera market seems ripe for innovation. It has to innovate, because the newest smartphones have sophisticated cameras which are 'good enough' for the general consumer. What do you think of Artefact's concept, would it fly with you?

DEMO, the conference where companies get six minutes on stage to present their product, kicked off this morning with VentureBeat's Matt Marshall talking social. "It's all about social," said Marshall, explaining that social media companies like Facebook have grown at an unprecedented pace. It took half a century for IBM to hit $1 billion, whereas it only took Facebook a handful of years, he said.

With that in mind, let's take a look at three companies that presented this morning at DEMO and hope to latch on to the ever-expanding social web.

AboutOne describes itself as a "location to manage memories and household information." In short, it looks almost like a Facebook for the familial unit, but with much more utility in mind. It serves as a place to not only store family-related documents (like instructions for the babysitter) but also information like car insurance and other useful documents. The site connects with other services via API, so that you don't even need to enter all of this information manually. Key in your car's VIN number and AboutOne can automatically import the model, make, year and everything else into the system.

The service also serves as an online location to store all sorts of other family-related documents, such as pictures and scans of your children's artwork. From this data, users can create newsletters for friends and family and even create online baby books, which they can then order hard copies of.

PhotoRocket

PhotoRocket jumps in the try to handle a key space in the social web - photo sharing. Facebook's photo sharing feature is one of its most popular, but photo sharing doesn't end there, with a plethora of other popular services. Where does PhotoRocket come in? It attempts to help users "share photos instantly in one step" to multiple destinations from a variety of platforms. Of course, this isn't the first time we've seen an app attempt this, but it's all in the execution. Just last week, we saw Chute display a similar product, but PhotoRocket tries to edge out competition with an important feature - integration.

PhotoRocket is available on Windows, Mac and iOS (What? No Android?) and shares content to Facebook, Twitter and a host of other sites. According to the company, it steps beyond competition by integrating directly into the operating system and letting users right-click on files, use a browser button or an app to share.

Social Eyes

Social Eyes, an ambitious app that lists among its competition some big hitters like Skype, is a "social video service that instantly connects you to your friends and groups of people who share your interests." So how does this differ from Skype? Social Eyes is a video and text chatting service that is centered on your existing social graph. You sign in using your Facebook login and it automatically populates your list of contacts according to your Facebook friends that have also signed up.

Social Eyes also does something Skype doesn't do - it organizes other users around interests, so you can join groups like "Current Events" or create your own group based on your interests. Beyond that, you can also record and send video messages to other users, so not everything has to be live. What keeps Social Eyes potentially a bit more above board than other live video chat services like Tiny Chat or Chat Roulette is its authenticated identity by way of Facebook Connect. Using Facebook Connect leads to greater accountability, and wearing of pants, than purely anonymous systems.

Plixi: It's Not About Tweeting Photos, It's About People, Places and Events

The most important difference between TweetPhoto and Plixi is a new feature involving user-created events and places. Anyone on Plixi can create an event or place using the new service, and these can be either public or private, as desired. An event could be something as large as a rock concert or as small as a 4-year-old's birthday party. Plixi users at these events can upload their photos to a collective pool via a unique email address or the new Plixi iPhone application (awaiting approval). This allows all the photos from a particular event to be gathered into one place instead of being "scattered all over the Web," says Sean Callahan, Plixi's co-founder and CEO.

The company stresses that it's not jumping on the geo-location bandwagon, however, but has "always" focused on geo-location since its very launch. Photos come in from mobile applications and devices, but it was never about checking in, explains Callahan. It was about "my friends and what they're doing."

With Plixi, the company will also focus heavily on privacy. Instead of re-creating your social graph by importing your Facebook and Twitter friends, you create a new social graph on the site. While that seems a bit tedious, it also allows you to get a fresh start by specifying who can see what photos as they are shared.

If, however, you used TweetPhoto within one of the many client applications, the change will be transparent - the new places and events features will be available only to those who browse to the website and create an account.

Plixi Says: We Did Location From the Very Beginning

Plixi's vision for a location-based service - that it should be about people and photos, not check-ins - isn't a bad one, necessarily. But it's a little naive to think that you can get everyone at a particular gathering to use Plixi for their photos instead of uploading them directly to their preferred social network of choice, like Facebook or Flickr, for example. At least as "TweetPhoto" the service was obviously filling a hole in the Twitter ecosystem. Since there's no way to upload directly to Twitter itself, services like TweetPhoto, TwitPic and yFrog found a niche in serving as a middleman between mobile photos and the micro-blogging network. But the lack of a photo-sharing feature is likely a problem that Twitter will soon remedy, either via an acquisition, partnership or the introduction of a native feature. And then what will become of these services?

As for Plixi, the photo-sharing service is hoping it can ride the wave of renewed interest in geo-location, while trying to appear it has had the idea all along. While that's inaccurate, really - mobile photo-sharing is one of the original location-based services, we suppose - the question is why now? Why not three months ago or six months from now? Maybe Plixi knows that it's only a matter of time before Twitter makes irrelevant services whose only feature is tweeting photos, at least whichever one isn't blessed as the "official partner" the way bit.ly was with shortening links. Maybe now is as good a time as any to make yourself stand out from the herd.

But will users agree that there's a real need for these "collective photo memories," that Plixi delivers? Or will seeing yourself tagged on Facebook be enough?

The integration between the two services is seamless, though Picnik's design is clearly different from Picasa's and quite a few users will probably think that they've arrived on a non-Google site. As Jonathan Sposata, the product manager for Google Photos and Picnik's original founder told us yesterday, this was a conscious decision on Google's part. Just like YouTube and a few other Google properties, Picnik will retain its original branding. Google is also keeping Picnik's fee structure intact. Picasa should automatically recognize if a Picnik user has a paid or free account.

Google didn't add any new features to Picnik. Instead, Sposata told us, most of the work over the last few months went into migrating Picnik's back-end (which ran on a combination of Picnik's own servers and Amazon's S3 storage service) to Google's infrastructure.

What About Picasa on the Desktop?

Overall, this is a welcome addition to the online version of Picasa, as it enables users to perform relatively complex image editing functions right in the browser. Interestingly, though, there is now a very clear mismatch between the editing functions in the Picasa desktop client and the online version. Chances are that Google will soon rectify this situation. As Sposata told us, today's announcement is just "the first sign of many wonderful things to come." Judging from our discussion with Google, bringing more of Picnik's tools to more Google properties in the near future is definitely one of the team's current priorities.

Face Tagging literally works exactly like tagging photos on Facebook. While viewing a picture, the text "In this photo:" is displayed below it with a link to begin tagging the photo. By clicking the link, users can then pinpoint people's faces in the photo and a box will appear around the face, as well as a pop-up dialogue box in which to enter the person's name and Twitter handle. Once done, users hit the "Done Tagging" button to return to normal browsing functionality - just like Facebook.

Honestly, the only difference between tagging photos on Facebook and on Twitpic is that the "Done Tagging" button appears above photos on the former and below photos on the latter. While Twitpic's new functionality is a dead lift of Facebook's long-existing photo tagging feature, it is smart to copy the social networking giant. Why re-invent the wheel? Instead, Twitpic is giving users a familiar experience, making the process easy and intuitive.

How It Doesn't Work

When users tag a face in a photo, by default they can send a rather dry tweet announcing the tag and including the user name of the person tagged, effectively working as a notification. First of all, the inability to personalize this message is a bit of a downer, but you can always just uncheck the box and send out the tweet yourself.

Additionally, the only way Twitpic alerts users that they have been tagged in a photo is via Twitter - so users could be tagged in hundreds of photos and not know it if the tagger chose not to tweet the tags. Users do have the ability to delete tags of themselves on other people's photos, but right now the only way of knowing of such photos is to be sent the tweet, which not everyone will choose to do.

In a phone interview today, Twitpic founder Noah Everett told ReadWriteWeb that additional features, like the ability to view photos you're tagged in, are in the works and should be out in a few weeks. The goal, he says, has been to launch the tagging feature and use user feedback to determine the next logical step.

What About Privacy?

That next logical step, for many users, may be privacy controls - something the new feature lacks. On Facebook, users have the ability to manage photos they have been tagged in and remove their association from a photo once-and-for-all. The only option related to photo tags for Twitpic users is the option to allow other people to tag their photos. Everett says Twitpic is looking into possible privacy controls, such as a blanket rule preventing anyone from tagging you, or specific user-based bans to avoid those "crazy ex-girlfriends", as he put it.

Personally, I use Twitpic mainly as a means to an end - I upload photos to the service for sharing on Twitter via a mobile application, which means I don't visit the Twitpic web interface too frequently. How am I supposed to know when I'm tagged in a photo if the user tagging me chooses not to tweet it? Even if I visit the Twitpic homepage, there is no way for me to view an aggregated list of photos I am tagged in and no system for notifying me of such photos.

Everett says the company is considering ways to notify users, including email alterts, but hopes that eventually app developers will add the functionality using Twitpic's API. I guess the good thing is if someone decides to surreptitiously tag me in a photo, for now the general public has no real great way of finding it either.

An Impending Headache for Data Fans?

The other important thing to note from the launch of Twitpic's Face Tagging functionality is that it is a new stand-alone platform on a third-party Twitter application. What that means is that compatibility between networks is completely up to Twitpic. When other Twitter-based photo sharing apps add this functionality (which they are likely to do), it will be nearly impossible for users to effectively aggregate their tagged photos (and other meta-data) across platforms.

I spoke with Thomas Vander Wal, father of the phrase "folksonomy" which refers to collective tagging of meta-data, and he shared some interesting insights into this situation.

"Since others have done similar things on other platforms (Facebook, Flickr) the [intellectual property] is fuzzy and Twitpic can't claim it, so others are free to jump in," Vander Wal told ReadWriteWeb. "It would be in Twitter's best interest to build a central aggregation point for this."

This is exactly why Twitter is rolling out annotations, which have been testing recently and should be out soon. The annotations will create a standardized framework for third-party apps to build from, making interoperability between services much easier. Everett said he actually spoke with people from Twitter today about "coming together" and "rolling [tagging functionality] into annotations."

Strangely, however, Twitter mentioned in April that it planned on having "trending annotations" and letting developers battle for standardization. It would make sense that meta-data for tagged photos could be added to Twitter's annotations, and if the services adopted the standard, aggregation would be simple.

If not, then the entrepreneurial community, "somebody like PixelPipe" as Vander Wal suggested, would need to create another third-party Twitter service that would handle this aggregation - not an ideal solution going forward. We can't blame Twitpic for this fate: what the company is doing is good in terms of pushing the platform forward. We can, however, bring up the privacy issues Twitpic has raised with their new service and its apparent lack of controls, but then again, it is a brand new feature and more functionality is on the way soon.

Flickr Has Lots of Competition

For a long time, it seemed as if Flickr was going to be satisfied with having an iPhone-optimized website and not a "real" app when it came to their iPhone/iPod Touch offering. That left the door open - wide open - for a number of developers to create their own Flickr tools. Do a search today for "flickr" in the App Store and you'll see a page filled with thirty-some results for alternatives to the official app. Although not all the apps are uploaders or photo browsers (some just mention "flickr" in their descriptions), many are. From Flickup to Flickr Sendr to Flickr Search and one of our personal favorites, FlickIt, the choices for interacting with Flickr from your iPhone are plenty.

But Flickr doesn't just compete with other Flickr-based apps, they also have to deal with the multi-site uploaders...which some could argue are even more useful than Flickr's own official app. For example, Pixelpipe supports uploading to social networks, micro-blogging services, photo and video sharing sites, blogs, online storage sites, and much more. It's an incredibly useful tool for anyone who shares photos on multiple sites or just feels more comfortable knowing the data is stored on more than one service in the cloud.

Why the Delay?

There have been rumors that an official app has been in development for some time, as noted by this VentureBeat article back in December 2008. Yes, 2008.

We have to wonder why Flickr decided to wait so long to develop something for the iPhone platform. The app itself isn't all that complicated and it could have flown through the app review process, so it seems to be a case of the company just not feeling it was a top priority. That's an odd business decision for a company who reported that the number one camera used on their site is the iPhone. Not to mention the fact that after releasing the iPhone-optimized site, they saw a 50% increase in mobile users year-over-year. In fact, it's not just an "odd" decision - it was a bad one.

Although we're sure the company will gain plenty of users for their app in no time - the simple app is well-designed and does a good job - it is somewhat funny that a universal search in iTunes for "flickr" today doesn't even return the official app in the top four results displayed in the "Applications" window. And considering the large number of Flickr competitors, it's possible that it never will.

In order to choose contributors, Picasa lets you access your Google contacts, and you can invite individual contacts or groups that you have already set up in Google Contacts (think: co-workers, family, etc.).

Sadly, you won't be able to use the Picasa desktop software to upload images to these albums if you are an invited contributor - only the actual owner of the album can. Also, if you use Internet Explorer, you can only upload five photos at a time.

New Desktop Features

On the desktop, Simplify Media's application now also includes a Photo Viewer, which replicates the iPhone app's functions on your desktop, including the map view. One nice feature for Mac users is that the latest version of the desktop tool also allows you to connect iPhoto to these remote libraries and view them right from within iPhoto.

Your PC as a Media Server

As Simplify Media basically turns your computer into a media server and doesn't store any data in the cloud, it is important to note that your computer needs to be running in order to use the iPhone app. This is probably the biggest drawback of Simplify Media's line-up of apps. However, this is also what makes the applications possible without running into copyright issues or making the storage unaffordable for the company.

If you just want access to all of your pictures without using a lot of space on your iPhone or iPod Touch and you don't mind paying a small monthly fee but you don't want to keep your machines running 24/7, also have a look at Phanfare's Photon app, which we liked a lot when we first reviewed it.

Note: if you are already using Simplify Media on your desktop or laptop, make sure you update to the latest version to get access to the photo features.

In September of 2008, Expono went live with its site and made the bold choice to go with 100% cloud computing. Other sites like SmugMug have done this with great success and it feels like a growing trend. The lower cost and ease of scaling made cloud computing a sensible choice for Expono and the company set about building its incredible array of features. Those features, combined with the company's talented and ambitious team based in Oslo, Norway, make Expono a potential contender in an increasingly crowded media sharing marketplace.

You can go here to view a complete list of Expono's features. It's an impressive list, if not a little overwhelming, and you simply need to have a look for yourself. Here are a few of the main features we like:

Custom Location in Maps:

Geotagging has become a pretty popular thing to do with photographs. It's just interesting for us to see on a map where a photo was taken. It gives viewers added perspective, helps the photographer better organize their collections and could even help businesses attract customers. Expono has a feature that lets users drag a pin, place it on a map where the photo was taken and give that place a name for future reference. It's a simply but useful tool and a nice feature.

Language Translation:

Expono has not forgotten our Spanish-speaking friends and allows English-Spanish translations. The company is frantically working on translation to other languages like Danish, Russian, French and Hebrew and is actively searching for help translating other languages.

Full Quality Photo Sharing on Facebook:

Expono allows users to share full quality photos and activities and connect on Facebook. It looks pretty straightforward and easy to do:

"Simply go to Facebook Settings on Edit Services menu, press the "Connect with Facebook" button and follow the instructions. It takes 10-30 seconds!"

"After your accounts have been connected, you will be able to tag your Facebook friends on your photos like any other contacts you already have in your address book. With your Facebook friends now on Expono, you can add them to your contact groups, give them access to the photos you want them to see and tag them on your photos.

Face Tagging and Sharing to FriendFeed and Twitter:

Expono has extended its integration with Friendfeed and Twitter that allows interaction between users of those services:

"Earlier we had automatic photo uploads announcements to Friendfeed and Twitter every time you uploaded new photos to Expono. The functionality allowed our users to inform their followers and subscribers about newly uploaded photos in a innovative way. Now we have extended that to include direct sharing of public album and photos right from the Share menu, giving your subscribers and followers access to view your full quality photos with just 1 click."

Basically, you connect your Expono account with FriendFeed or Twitter, tag your friends' photos, add them to your contact groups and give them access to the photos you want them to see.

See what Expono's small but loyal group of followers are talking about on Twitter and also on FriendFeed.

Oh, did we mention Expono's context aware media RSS that allows users to enter a URL into your Wii Opera browser URL field, run it fullscreen and watch a slideshow on your TV? Don't forget authenticated RSS feeds, GPS support, photo editing, iPhoto photocasting, EXIF and IPTC support and much, much more. We also like that Expono takes your privacy very seriously.

This hungry startup (a core team of six, including Co-Founder and CEO Magnus Jonsson) means business when it says there are other exciting things in the works. Expono team member Daniel Bentes hinted at the company's interest in a developing a mobile site, similar to Flickr's new mobile site, that uses Apple's Core Location service right from Safari. Bentes says, "this kind of location awareness will be the future of not only search and discovery services, but even ad-based and paid content, giving even more value to viewers and readers alike. As of now, Apple's Core Location is the prime example of this ability". He adds that the company "...would like to implement the same kind of functionality on Expono.com for the coming iPhone version. But would REALLY love to implement it on the main web version as well, enabling this functionality to an even broader audience".

Like we said, there are other sites out there that do similar things. But when you combine all these things together and they are done well (in this case they did a great job), you get a very powerful and useful tool that just may be worth forking over your hard-earned money for. If you don't want to take our word for it, check out what our friend @CleverClogs had to say about Expono over on Friendfeed. She is quite knowledgeable and discriminating about such matters. You might want to also go to the Expono Customer Support Community on Get Satisfaction to see what others are saying and to throw in your own two cents.

Be sure to read the Expono blog for even more information and follow the company's Twitter updates @expono. The service is still in Beta, but you should have no problem getting an invite if you sign up at Expono.com.

Flickr, which hosts a rapidly increasing number of photos, is increasingly using location as a means to organize photos. Earlier this year, for example, the company announced that it now hosts over 100 million geotagged photos and in order to make this data more accessible, Flickr also unveiled a new 'nearby' page on its web site, which displays a map with images that were taken close to another photo.

Flickr's mobile site is also becoming an increasingly valuable asset to the company. Last December, Flickr announced that traffic to the mobile site had increased by more than 50% over the last year, and it has made various smaller updates to the site since then. As smartphones become increasingly better at taking pictures and surfing the web, it is good to see that Flickr is bringing these two worlds together nicely on its mobile site.

As we reported last week, Photobucket is highly dependent on MySpace for a large share of its traffic. Keeping this in mind, it makes perfect sense for Photobucket to try to reach out to a wider audience across the Internet by giving its users more and easier options to share their content.

Making Sharing Easier

While posting from Photobucket is now significantly easier, it should be noted that this is not a solution that auto-posts your images directly to a selection of different social sites. You still have to individually post your images to every site separately, so this is not a replacement for services like Tarpipe or Pixelpipe.

Mobile Traffic Up

In its announcement, Photobucket also points out that traffic to its mobile site tripled during 2008 and continues to grow. Given that Photobucket's users trend towards being younger than those of other photo sharing sites, this makes perfect sense, but it is also a good indicator that there is still a lot of growth left in the mobile photo sharing market..

Is This Enough to Gain Back Market Share?

Overall, these updates, which also include a new 'live slideshow' feature, look like they are putting Photobucket in the right direction. The company has lost a large amount of market share in the last few months and is under a lot of pressure from Yahoo's Flickr. These new features will allow it to become more visible outside of MySpace, though we will have to see if this is enough to make a difference in the long run.

Declining Traffic from MySpace

Last July, Photobucket still got 54% of its traffic from MySpace, but last month, that number had declined to 38%. In the U.S., MySpace has now been surpassed by Facebook as the most popular social network and given how strongly Photobucket is tied to the fortunes of MySpace, we can only assume that this negative trend will continue for Photobucket.

According to Hitwise, neither Flickr nor Google's Picasa (the number two and three in the market) get more than 6% of their traffic from social networks - instead, these services tend to rely more on traffic from search engines.

One Photo per Day

As you would expect, you can upload your photos directly to the service, or you can send them to a personalized momentile email address. Whenever you upload a new photo, you can add a short message that will then be sent out to your followers (momentile calls them 'stalkers') by SMS, Twitter, or email. However, momentile stresses that this is only meant to inform your followers about a new photo upload and should not be confused with tagging or adding a caption to a photo. Indeed, you can't add captions to a photo yourself - only your followers can add these.

You can upload more than one picture per day, by the way, but momentile enforces its one-picture-per-day rule and will automatically discard the older picture. Every day, you have until midnight to update your picture. That constraint, of course, is the focus of the service and it does make you think twice about which picture you want to choose to represent a given day.

Not a Social Network

Momentile insists that it is not a social network, but it does have a number of social features like following other users or saving other users' photos in your own 'stash.'

365

In a way, momentile codifies the 365 meme that is pretty popular on Flickr right now into one coherent app, with a focus on the mobile aspects of sharing and taking these pictures.

Overall, momentile looks like a fun and interesting app. It does have some minor usability problems, but the core idea behind the service is pretty cool. A few weeks ago, the cool kid on the blog was Plinky, a web app that asked you a different question every day. In some ways, momentile is a logical extension of that idea and it will be interesting to see how momentile's users decide to utilize the service in the long run.

Invites

Momentile is still in private alpha testing, but we have ten invites to give away for now - just send an email to 'momentile AT frederic.otherinbox.com' and we will get one to you ASAP.