Trend: Social Photosharing

Photo sharing applications are on the rise. New applications allow users to share their pictures not only on the Internet, but on mobile phones, allowing others to be part of their personal picture show.

Trend Description
Digital photography revolutionized the way people share their pictures. Instead of inviting friends to an evening of snacks and slides, one sends a link to one of the many photo-sharing sites. While most applications are commercial sites, allowing users to order prints, photo-personalized T-Shirts and mugs and other photo merchandise, others – like Flickr – count on the social networking factor. Users can invite friends to share their photos on the same site, for example related to a special event. And new applications are on the way. The latest ones allow the sharing of photographs on mobile phones instantly or to link zoomable pictures within each other.

Cases:

Radar:
“Share what you do, while you do it”, is the motto of Radar. The new photo-sharing application allows users to immediately share pictures taken with one’s mobile camera phone. Of course the invited friends who receive the pictures have to be signed up with Radar. Then they can immediately browse and comment from their phone or PC – using text or their own pictures. This allows mobile phone users to communicate in a totally new way. Well, sometimes one picture says more than a thousand words.

Zoomr
Zoomr is right now in its beta-phase. While people can share their pictures in a similar way as on Flickr, the photos are displayed in a very different way. According to the motto “Experience the world through photos”, Zoomr displays the uploaded images on a world map. Tag map also allows to see the image in the very region it was taken, either on a satellite map or on a local map, although there are not many local maps available yet. Users can also just zoom into the pictures or search for other images taken in a certain radius. Another search function allows one to find pictures according to the most popular “tags”, including: garden, party, nyc, berlin, vacation, people, macro, cameraphone or geotagged. A truly global approach to digital photo sharing.

Trend Impact:
As more and more phones and laptops are equipped with cameras, users are looking for things to do with their pictures. These digital images are not like high-quality prints, which were mainly there to preserve precious memories. Digital images are fast and – mostly – much more short-lived. Digital photography truly captures the moments, for the moment – not for eternity. The new photo-sharing applications accept this fact, which in the end does not mean that the big picture will not also have some memorable meaning.

Flickr

Radar

Zoomr

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