Introduction - Photo Sharing

Photo sharing site is one which offer users the means of uploading their digital images to a third party online servers, where the images are stored and hosted for public or private access and display.

A main difference that distinguishes between photo sharing site and an individual’s or institutional’s own image collection is the fact that once uploaded, the content in the hands of a third party and often sits alongside other users’ content.

One of the most well-known photo sharing sites is Flickr, which was originally conceived in 2002 as a video game-screenshot sharing web site, but it quickly blossomed into a full-fledged photo sharing site with a bustling community. Flickr, like many of the others, also added video sharing to their repertoire. Examples of other popular sites are such as Picasa Web Album, Photobucket and etc.

Photo sharing site are categorised into four different broad categories, by their principal function.
1. Imaged Hosting Services, aimed at users who want to incorporate images into other social software (such as generation of code to easily embed images into blogs, social networking sites); usually publicly searchable.
2. Private sharing of photo albums between the users and other specified users or select groups
(friends/families); images are not publicly searchable.
3. Online printing service, mostly targeted at users who want high quality prints, or “photo gifts” (such as calendars), and also provide album sharing as a by-product of having user’s digital files; images sometimes publicly searchable.
4. Public/open photo sharing – images can be annotated, browsed and search and licensed for use.

While photo blogs tend only to display a chronological view of user-selected medium-sized photos, most photo sharing sites provide multiple views (such as thumbnails, and slideshows), the ability to classify photos into albums as well as add annotations (such as captions or "tags") and comments. Some photo sharing sites provide complete online organization tools equivalent to desktop photo-management applications.
Desktop photo-management applications may include their own photo-sharing features or integration with sites for uploading images to them. There are also desktop applications whose sole function is sharing photos, generally using peer-to-peer networking. Basic photo sharing functionality can be found in applications that allow you to email photos, for example by dragging and dropping them into pre-designed templates.
Photo sharing is not confined to the web and personal computers but is also possible from portable devices such as camera phones, using applications that can automatically transfer photos as you take them, to photo sharing sites and photo blogs, either directly or via MMS.

Privacy and security
Online theft and photo fraud have become major issues in the photo sharing market. The US Ad Council recently created an advertising campaign to warn users of the dangers of posting personal photos to public Websites. Recently, Phishers have begun to lift usernames and passwords from Yahoo users by turning to secondary sign-on pages, such as that for the Yahoo Photos image sharing service. One Website, 2Pad.com, has been created to minimize the risk of photo fraud and theft.

Chronology of Photo sharing:
The very first photo sharing sites was developed during the mid to late 1990s primarily from service providing online ordering of prints which is photo-finishing. During the early 2000s, more photo sharing sites developed with the goal of providing permanent and centralized access to a user’s photos and in video clips which was resulted in different approaches to revenue generation and functionality amongst providers. The first photo sharing site is photoblogs which tend to display only a chronological view of user-selected medium-sized photos. Most of the photo sharing sites provide multiple view which includes thumbnails and slideshows and provide the ability to classify the photos into albums which can add captions on it or tags or comments.

http://lifehacker.com/395900/five-best-photo-sharing-web-sites
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_sharing

Labels: Introduction