Photobucket, which powers Twitter’s new photo uploading feature, released some survey results this week looking at mobile photo and video uploading trends.
Though the Photobucket-powered Twitter feature is only available on Twitter.com at this point (as opposed to the mobile apps), Photobucket CEO Tom Munro thinks Twitter will be a major factor in the future. “With Twitter releasing their developer APIs, likely extending photo sharing into their mobile platforms, and Apple’s announcement of deep Twitter integration to all of its iOS-based devices, we believe mobile photo tweets will scale rapidly in the coming months,” he tells WebProNews.
Twitter launched the media upload API earlier this month.
Here are some of the highlights from Photobucket’s survey:
- 45% use a mobile device for capturing video at least once a week
- 17% use a mobile device for capturing video at least once a day
- 9% use a mobile device for capturing video multiple times per day
- Total video uploads (web and mobile) are 3.5x higher year-over-year (July 2010 to July 2011)
- Total video uploads from mobile devices are 14x higher than in December 2010
- 24% of respondents upload personal images to three different online photo sites
- 12% of respondents upload personal images to four sites
- 15% of respondents upload personal images on five or more sites
- Nearly 18 million monthly unique visitors on Photobucket mobile web and mobile apps
- Mobile uploads in excess of 25 million per month – 5x higher year-over-year
Google has made an interesting mark on the photos space with the launch of Google+. Google has had Picasa Web Albums for years, but they’ve made these cool again with the launch of Google+ and particularly the instant upload feature of the Google+ Android app (which is unfortunately missing from the iPhone app at this point).
“Google+ is a very interesting and innovative social network,” says Munro. “That said, Photobucket is designed to be the place you store, organize and share all your photos and videos for life…not just the ones that you post to social networks.”
With all due respect, I’m not sure I take the same view of Google’s features as a user of the Instant Upload feature, which I would consider as a more complete storage solution of photos for my “life” given that it uploads every photo I take, which can then be shared as needed.
Even still, it’s clear that mobile uploads will only continue to trend upwards for the foreseeable future.
“The improved quality of photos and videos from camera phones, ease of uploading and constant availability are making them the default device for image capturing and sharing,” says Munro.