Yesterday, the unfortunate but none-too-surprising news about the departure of Flickr's co-founders Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield broke out across the web. In light of Yahoo's recent troubles, not to mention the small but notable list of other resigning Yahoo employees, some users who have relied on Flickr's service for years are starting to wonder about its future. Is it time to look for an alternative?
For those that are hedging their bets by setting up shop elsewhere, the photo sharing web site called 72Photos is hoping to attract their interest by creating the next gen flickr. The site isn't brand-new, but they've been adding and perfecting their feature set since their initial launch last year when they were known as "XMG Image."
In a recent interview on Ajaxian, Eric "A" (no last name given!) of 72Photos claims that his site isn't doing anything "extremely new or groundbreaking in terms of features at the moment" because they're currently trying to appeal to more mainstream and novice users. However, after taking a look around, it's possible to say that he was just being a little modest. Even though the site is still relatively new, there are a handful of features that at least make it a worthwhile competitor. Here are a few worth taking note of:
Fully Customizable Photo Galleries
Where flickr has sets, 72Photos offers photo galleries with drag and drop functionality for adding and arranging photos. Galleries can be customized with different colors and fonts and several built-in preset themes are also available. When you make changes to a gallery, you can preview the results in real-time.
Photo Gallery (Image Courtesy of Ajaxian)
Embeddable Slideshows
A feature called "Photostage" lets you embed images or galleries onto your blog, web site, or social network profile. These are fully customizable slideshows, similar to what Slide or RockYou would offer, but much more professional looking. There's also a Photostage app built just for Facebook users.
Plugins
For bloggers, 72Photos currently offers plugins for both WordPress and Mephisto that let you add photos from your account onto your blog. There's also a Firefox search plugin that lets you search 72Photos from your address bar.
Community Features
The social element is very much at play on 72Photos. You can track your friends' activities on the site right from your dashboard, which is the landing page you arrive on upon login. Like flickr, contacts can also be marked as "family" or "friends" and permissions on photos can be set accordingly. User profiles are nicely done, too, highlighting an individual's photos and galleries from the front page.
User Profile Page
Editing Tools
Built-in editing tools done in Ajax and Javascript currently let you perform basic edits to photos like cropping and enhancements, however, Pro users will have access to advanced functions like versioning, batch editing, and watermarking.
No Monthly Upload Cap on Number of Uploads, Photos
The only differences between the free membership and the Pro membership ($14.95/year) are an overall size limit per account and a bandwidth limit. Free accounts only have 200 MB of storage space and a 10 GB/month bandwidth cap. Pro users have unlimited bandwidth and 5 GB of storage and more advanced editing features. Plus, Pro accounts are ad-free.
Right now, 72Photos is a good alternative to flickr and other similar sites, but it may not be offering enough to encourage established photographers to leave flickr's large community for another startup. However, 72Photos plans to release some features in the future that may have them considering otherwise. Soon, the site will be expanding their feature set to appeal to the professional by providing areas for artists to sell their work as well as offering a way to allow photographers to find models in their area and vice versa.
In browsing the site, you can tell that the design has been carefully thought out, but there are still a couple of areas where it needs tweaking. For example, either I'm getting old or the font choices on a few pages were a bit too small to be easily read.
There also isn't a good way to find and add new friends at the moment beyond inviting them via email - so Web 1.0! For a site that aims to be a social network for photographers, there has to be a better way to connect with others.
I also ran into a technical error involving a security certificate on one of the pages, something that would certainly frighten off the novice users they wish to appeal to.
However, despite these issues, there's still potential for 72Photos to do well, once they are resolved. Although in reality the majority of flickr users won't be likely to leave that site anytime soon, 72Photos may offer enough appeal to pros that they might at least establish a secondary account here for promotional purposes.
Comments
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I use Zenfolio for my online photo gallery. It's not a replacement for Flickr as it lacks community/social features. But for pro photography, it rocks. All they need to do is add some profile/commenting support and perhaps integration with Facebook and widgets, and they'll have a terrific platform. And no, I don't work at the company...I just like their tools an awful lot (plus it works great with Adobe Lightroom).
Posted by: Jared White | June 19, 2008 1:48 PM
Just tried 72Photos and i'm not even able to upload a profile image with either Firefox 3 nor Opera 9.5. Guess, there's still a long way to go...
Posted by: Ralph | June 19, 2008 2:45 PM
@Ralph Hmmm, yep - I chose a profile pic from one of the photos I already uploaded so I didn't notice that, but I agree they have some kinks to work out. Still think there's potential there, though.
Posted by: Sarah Perez
|
June 19, 2008 4:24 PM
Hello Ralph: Thanks for the feedback regarding the bug with profile images. We did detect this issue shortly after deploying our latest software version last week. This issue has been corrected and a patch was pushed earlier today (June 19th). Please let me know if you are still having issues.
As for the FireFox 3 and Opera 9.5 issues, we are still completing cross browser testing and FireFox 3 is one of our main points of focus.
Thanks again for all your support and constructive feedback. We strongly urge our entire image hosting community to partake in our growth and future features!
Sincerely,
Jonathan | XMG Networks, Inc.
Posted by: Jonathan @ XMG Networks | June 19, 2008 7:39 PM
What about photoshop express. its more of a photo editing, but there's also online sharing of photos and its not half bad. I prefer it to flickr in general.
Posted by: Maria | June 19, 2008 10:45 PM
@Jonathan: Thanks for the reply, indeed the profile image upload works fine now (just use an aspect ratio of 1:1 like most sites do). I'll give 72Photos a deeper look.
Posted by: Ralph | June 20, 2008 1:56 AM
Do you know ipernity.com?
It's considered as a very good alternative to Flickr (with photos, videos for non-pro too, music, blog...)
There is a lot of ex-flickr's members, as me :)
www.ipernity.com
Posted by: audrey | June 20, 2008 3:23 AM
Another great photo site is fotoLibra.com where if you can upload big high res pictures you can sell them off the site to professionals like book publishers. It's not microstock, it's an open access stock agency. Works for me.
Posted by: Francis Harlech | June 20, 2008 7:51 AM
I've been using Flickr as an online backup for all my photos since my daughter was born almost two years ago. I'd love any rival site to be able to import all my data (photos tags comments etc) from Flickr if I was to consider it.
One thing that's missing from Fickr that I'd like is the ability to upload photos and have them placed in your photostream based on the date they were taken. This would allow me to start uploading my archive of 20,000 or so older photos without them disrupting the new new ones... anyone have any ideas on this?
Posted by: Jago | June 21, 2008 7:59 AM
Thanks for sharing 72photos. It's got an easy signup and an attractive interface. It's kind of cool that they ask what kind of camera equipment you use, including lenses. But for a social networking photo site, they just dont ask enough questions in the profile.
I like how I can integrate the Flickr photos right into my WordPress blog as a widget. I'm going to be looking for something like that from 72Photos.
Both Picassa and Flickr offer desktop droplets for uploading photos and adding metatags. This is a true timesaver. I dont see this on 72Photos (it may be there, I just havent seen it). If they're going to make a play for Flickr's base of users, they're going to need to offer some more advanced features and options. And it will have to be Mac friendly!
Not bad for a relatively new site.
Buddy
http://wordspicturesweb.wordpress.com
Posted by: Buddy Scalera | June 21, 2008 3:32 PM
Agree with Buddy.
In addition, a little warning to new users: be aware that your profile, real name, location, and e-mail are set to be publicly viewable by default. Don't forget to check settings.
May be it's better to give user notice about it...
Posted by: zuko | June 22, 2008 4:09 AM
The site looks good but the space is pretty limited. I will easily overshoot 5 GB limit fast. If they offer unlimited space for $24.99, I will switch from Flickr immediately.
PS: If 72 photos guys are ganging out here, can you please explain to me why you ask for date of birth and also a check mark next to "I am over 13 years old" stuff? Can't your app do the simple math :-)
Posted by: Krish | June 22, 2008 10:28 PM