WebProNews

Tag: Photo Sharing

  • Instagram’s New ‘Favorites’ Feature Aims to Eliminate the Need for ‘Finstagram’

    Instagram’s New ‘Favorites’ Feature Aims to Eliminate the Need for ‘Finstagram’

    Instagram had been testing a new feature with which users can now create a list of friends. Called Favorites, users can now share posts with a smaller group of people rather than all of their followers. The feature is an upgrade to old social network friend lists.

    Users had been trying to make a more private Instagram version for themselves. They would post pictures publicly and delete them after being liked by their friends, or create a separate account known as a “Finstagram.” Usually set up by teens, these secret accounts are used to share their unedited photos with a select group of people. These accounts usually have a high following, and as a result, they either tend to use it more than their Instagram account or quit using Instagram entirely due to social pressure.

    Robby Stein, Instagram’s product lead, recognizes that people are trying to “hack” Instagram to create smaller audiences. “The best version of Instagram is one where you feel closer to the people you are connected to,” he says.

    The new Favorites feature could have a significant impact on the way people are currently using the platform. It would reshape the social dynamics of Instagram and create a sense of intimacy among followers.

    If a user marks a friend as one of their favorites, it will likely encourage their friend to follow and like their posts. Getting an increased number of likes will, in turn, encourage users to share more pictures to their favorites on the platform. Their favorites are more likely to mark the user as their own favorite, which goes on to increase more private groups.

    This feature works for both regular pictures and Instagram Story posts, where users will see new options to share them to their favorites.Users concerned with their privacy would have greater control over who gets to see their pictures. Favorites won’t be notified if a user adds or remove them to their personal list. The new feature would allow users to create a group of selected friends who can view certain posts and there would be no option for someone to request to be on that list.

    Every profile will get a new Favorites tab denoted by a star. Posts that are shared only with Favorites will appear in this tab so that users can keep track of which posts are private. If someone is on the user’s Favorite list, they would be able to view the user’s favorite post on the Favorite tab. Pictures shared with them will be denoted by a green Favorites badge at the top of posts.

    If a user removes someone from their list, they won’t be able to access the user’s private photos anymore, even those which were shared while they were on the list. If they visit the Favorites tab, it will be empty.

    This feature had reportedly been tested over a “small percentage” of users for over a year before a full rollout in the coming months. It’s not clear when the feature would be implemented, but nearly every portion of the app will be tweaked to accommodate it. Robby Stein, Instagram’s product lead, added that they “really want to get this right.”

  • Bump And Flock Are Shutting Down This Month

    Bump announced that it had been acquired by Google back in September. At the time, the company said that both the Bump app and its Flock photo sharing app would continue on. That is no longer the case.

    Bump revealed in a blog post that both apps will be shut down effective January 31st as the Bump team continues working on new Google projects. On that date, the apps will be removed from both Google Play and Apple’s App Store.

    If you’ve already downloaded the apps, they’ll stop working after that, and all user data will be deleted, according to Bump.

    CEO and co-founder David Lieb wrote, “We’ve taken much care to make sure that you can retain any data you have in Bump and Flock. At any point in the next 30 days, simply open either app and and follow the instructions for exporting your data. You’ll then receive an email with a link containing all of your data (photos, videos, contacts, etc) from Bump or Flock.”

    “Over the years, we’ve been inspired and humbled by the millions of people who have used Bump and Flock,” he added. “Your feedback, enthusiasm, and support has brought much meaning to our work, and we want to thank you all for that. In many ways, Bump was a revolutionary product that inspired many subsequent advances and helped push the world forward. We hope our new creations at Google will do the same.”

    It’s likely that as a result of Bump’s refocusing we’ll see some more Bump and Flock-like features coming to existing Google products like Google+ Photos and perhaps Android.

    Image: Bump

  • Twizgrid Upgrade Gives Twitter an Aesthetic Contrast

    Twizgrid, the increasingly popular photo browser for Twitter, released a comprehensive new upgrade that will have tweeters marveling at its sheer utility. While Twitter is usually a place where words are the centerpiece of interest, Twizgrid has a goal to bring contrast to that notion by providing a uniquely visual experience on the platform.

    Their latest group of enhancements makes sharing photos on Twitter even more appealing by including a massive increase in available photo content, convenient access to a user’s home timeline, and a recent album to view images in real time. Users can view Twitter photos by topic, person, or location with Twizgrid.

    A dynamic album titled, “Around Me” shows a chronology of nearby photos but addresses privacy concerns utilizing a user-driven approach which allows the photos originator to selectively identify their location on a case by case basis.

    Twizgrid Co-Founder Chauncey Regan comments on the “Around Me” album and other upgrades to their service:

    “This feature supplements dominant nearby apps, such as Banjo and Highlight, as well as Twitter’s nearby tweet feature. Twizgrid now offers an enticing way to view what’s happening in the immediate vicinity, whether it’s a raging party or a raging fire.”

    “Our unwavering objective is to be the most cohesive, comprehensive and compelling platform to display Twitter photos.”

    Twizgrid is available for free on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Visit the iTunes store to download the app.

  • Facebook Camera App Launches For iOS

    Facebook has announced that its new Camera app will be launching later today. The app is a social photo-sharing app similar to Instagram.

    Facebook Product Manager Dirk Stoop outlined briefly what functionality the app will have. When users first download and log into the app they will be presented with a grid of pictures posted by people on their friends list. They can swipe through the images and easily tap to enlarge them and “Like” or comment on them.

    Facebook Camera also makes sharing photos to Facebook easier by allowing users to share multiple photos at once. Users simply select each photo they wish to upload by marking it with a check mark, then tap the post button.

    The feature that makes the app most Instagram-like is its ability to edit photos. Users can crop and rotate photos before posting, and can, of course, add a variety of filters.

    The Facebook Camera app in action

    Facebook Camera strengthens Facebook’s position in the mobile market, something the company stated was a priority during its IPO last week. The app could also be geared to appeal to photographers, who are one of the few niche groups to have fully embraced Google+.

    This app comes just weeks after Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition of Instagram, which is a company devoted to creating a photo-sharing app. If Facebook Camera is really based on Instagram technology, the turnaround for producing the app would have to have been lightening-fast. This suggests that Facebook was probably already nearing completion on Camera when Instagram was purchased. It is possible that Facebook was worried about the legal ramifications of releasing an app so similar to Instagram.

    Facebook provided a short, soundless clip that demonstrates how Camera will work, which you can view below. The app, if it isn’t already at the time you read this, will be available for download in Apple’s App Store later today.

  • Flickr Introduces ‘Liquid’ Layout

    Photo sharing platform Flickr has been undergoing a redesign, recently launching a new uploader that accommodates larger pictures, in line with the platform’s philosophy of “Large sizes + Low compression = Beautiful Photos.” Now hi-resolution pictures are viewable via Flickr’s main page, according to the site’s blog.

    flickr liquid

    Flickr calls this its “liquid” layout, and adjusts photo size according to the size of the browser window – and location, time, camera, title, description and tags can still be added. Key features include:

    -The biggest photo size is shown depending on your browser window
    -There is absolutely no “upscaling”, and we try to avoid downsampling as much as possible.
    -The title and the sidebar are visible without scrolling on landscape oriented photos. (which are the vast majority of photos on Flickr.)

    The lack of upscaling and downsampling is likely a welcome feature for professional photographers, as certain resizing tactics haven’t done wonders for image quality in the past. Flickr is also introducing the new photo sizes to its API and in its “All Sizes” interface. For more detail on how the liquid layout resampling works, check out Flickr’s code blog.

  • Facebook “Acquires” Another Photo-sharing Service – Lightbox

    Users who jump onto the Lightbox website this afternoon will be surprised with a short message declaring that the Lightbox team is joining Facebook. Over on the Lightbox blog, Thai Tran and Nilesh Patel, the co-founders of Lightbox, posted a thank-you and farewell to their loyal user community. From the blog post:

    We started Lightbox because we were excited about creating new services built primarily for mobile, especially for the Android and HTML5 platforms, and we’re honored that millions of you have downloaded the Lightbox Photos app and shared your experiences with the Lightbox community.

    Today, we’re happy to announce that the Lightbox team is joining Facebook, where we’ll have the opportunity to build amazing products for Facebook’s 500+ million mobile users.

    The blog post does not make it clear, but according to AllThingsD, all seven of Lightbox’s employees have been hired by Facebook. Considering this news and Facebook’s recent purchase of Instagram, it is obvious that Facebook is planning to aggressively expand both its mobile and photo-sharing capabilities in the near future. The timing of the hirings also comes just before Facebook’s imminent IPO, meaning that the company might be trying to bolster investor confidence in its mobile division.

    What does this mean for Lightbox? Well, obviously, it means the company has no employees. As for specifics, Tran and Patel stated in their blog post that, as of today, the company will no loger be accepting new signups. Existing users may continue to use Lightbox until June 15. The company has, thankfully, provided users with a convenient way to download all of their photos.

    If there is a silver lining to be seen in this story for Lightbox users, it might be that Facebook has not purchased Lightbox itself, but simply hired the employees. What that means is Tran and Patel have promised to open source portions of the Lightbox code and post them in a Github repository. In other words, it won’t be long before a Lightbox clone is up and running.

    If you have never used LIghtbox, you can take a look at the video below and get an idea of how it works. If you are a Lightbox user, feel free to watch and begin your nostalgic reminiscing early.

    (Lightbox blog via AllThingsD)

  • Flickr Introduces Pinterest Attributed Sharing

    [UPDATE] Today Pinterest is also rolling out similar attribution for Behance, Vimeo, and YouTube. Check out the Pinterest blog for all of the details.

    [ORIGINAL]
    Flickr today announced a new way to share Flickr photos, favorites, groups, and galleries. On the Flickr blog, Kay Kremerskothen, a Flickr community manager, announced that Flickr, having worked closely with Pinterest, will now allow users to easily share content to Pinterest.

    A Pinterest button will now appear in the share menu above photos. The button will even be prioritized as a shortcut if you use it enough. The button will only appear if the photographer has allowed the content to be shared.

    When a Flickr photo is pinned to Pinterest, a clear attribution statement will be seen under the pin’s description. This attribution will contain the name of the photographer, the title of the photo, and a link back to the photo page on Flickr. Take a look at the format in the picture below:

    <a href=Pinterest attribution of a Flickr photo” />

    This attribution will carry over for embedded photos as well. For example, a Flickr photo embedded on a blog and then shared to Pinterest will still contain the attribution, complete with a link all the way back to the original Flickr photo page.

    It seems as if Flickr is going above-and-beyond to make sure their users are attributed correctly, and that’s to be applauded. The only question now is how long Pinterest can hold onto its recent popularity, which has begun to dip. What do you think? Leave a comment below and let me know.

  • Flickr’s Android App Enables Batch Loading

    Flickr’s Android App Enables Batch Loading

    The batch loading of photos on Flickr, a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, has become possible thanks to their Flickr Android App. If you own an Android phone you can select as many photos from your gallery as you want.

    Weak signals will not get in the way of downloading on the go because Flickr has added the upload queue to make uploading more successful. Users can also track the progress of their uploads, and if the signal is interrupted, the process will reload itself.

    The website currently hosts more than six billion images.

    Will their numbers double within the next year due to batch loading?

    You can get the official Flickr Android App here.

    Users of the app only gave it 3.6 out of 5 stars.

    Here are some criticisms of the app:

    “Scrolling is way too choppy. Paging hardly ever works.”

    “Why can’t you add photos to groups yet, this would make it so much better.”

    “It would have been so much better, if I could add new tags, make my hidden photos visible add them to groups also go look into group activity and the best thing arrange meetup & get notified when my flickr friends are in my country or state. You can do lot more.. This app is for babies.. Kindly improve on it.”

    What do you think of the app?

  • “Dabble” Launched by Former Twitter Vice President

    After Instagram was recently bought by Facebook for a hefty $1 billion, it’s to be expected that mobile app stores will see more photo-sharing apps pop up to get in on the action. In fact, an argument could be made that there is a place in the market for an Instagram replacement, given the reaction to its purchase by some of its former users.

    Enter Dabble. Dabble is a photo-sharing app that creates a photo journal for the user by creating “postcards” made up of a picture and a small amount of text. Where it differs from other photo-sharing apps is that it is location based. Users can tag a “postcard” with a location and leave it for others in that same location to view. Other Dabble users and friends can then comment on the postcard. The effect is as if bulletin boards full of polaroid photos are hanging all around users in a virtual space.

    The first screenshots of the app up on the iPhone App Store show off Dabble’s basic interface:

    Dabble ScreenshotDabble screenshot

    Dabble was developed by a company called Daemonic labs. The company has 11 “team members” who have been working on Dabble for the past year. Daemonic labs was founded by CEO Pete Goettner along with co-founders Antonio Altamirano and Santosh Jayaram. Jayaram is a former vice president of business operations at Twitter and a former manager of the Search Quality Operations team at Google.

    Dabble is an interesting twist on the photo-sharing app concept, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it become successful. Though Instagram will fit well with Facebook’s photo-sharing goals, I see Dabble as being closer to something Twitter might want to acquire. Twitterers being able to leave tweets and photos in their wake might be fun. Also, an augmented-reality version of Dabble that displays postcards in the location they were dropped would be nice too, especially when using a Google Glass headset. Daemonic Labs already has a visualization of how that might look in this trailer from the Dabble website:

  • 500px Offers New $20 Premium Plan

    Toronto-based image hosting site 500px, which calls itself ‘the best photography site in the world,’ has just unveiled a new level in its pay plans, simply called called ‘Plus.’ At first glance, one might suspect that 500px is to Flickr as Vimeo is to YouTube: it’s a flashier looking platform, catering more exclusively to artists than to the masses. Below is 500px interviewing one of its contributing photographers:

    For a long while, 500px offered an “Awesome Membership” for $50 a year, twice as much as Flickr Pro at $24.95 annually. So now, for $19.95, one can obtain the pro-level features at 500px for $5 less. According to the site, Plus features include unlimited uploads, a personal store, unlimited collections and advanced statistics. The only thing missing from the Awesome Membership is a personalized portfolio, featuring customizable domains and the inclusion of Google Analytics. Yahoo’s Flickr has yet to offer much by way of targeted maketing, and appears to be catering more towards social networking, putting 500px in a good spot as a choice for photo professionals and freelancers.

    500px, sporting a front page reminiscent of Pinterest‘s interface, was founded in 2009, and grew to over 3 million registered users by 2011. Each user gets a ‘flow’ page, where his/her activity on the site appears. Followers can rate user pictures, with highly voted ones ending up in the ‘popular’ field. Other categories making up the sharing community include editor’s choice, upcoming, fresh and market – these represent highest rated, trendy, newest and for sale.

  • President Obama Joins Instagram, Brings Photo Filtering To The 2012 Campaign Trail

    As the campaign season heats up, President Obama is taking one more step to connect with the iOS culture – by joining Instagram.

    The wildly popular photo filtering app is already on its way to becoming a consummate social network, as users’ photos are displayed on a news-feed-type stream complete with commenting and “liking” abilities. With Instagram, Obama, who already has the reputation of a tech-savvy president, looks to reach a social media-using crowd that is distinct, but not altogether different than the crowd he reaches via Twitter and Facebook.

    Here’s what the Instagram team had to say about it on their official blog:

    We’re excited to welcome President Barack Obama to Instagram! We look forward to seeing how President Obama uses Instagram to give folks a visual sense of what happens in the everyday life of the President of the United States. In addition to sharing photos through the @barackobama Instagram account, the Obama 2012 staff is asking supporters to share their photos from the campaign trail with the tag #obama2012.

    And this is the first photo uploaded to the Obama Instagram account:

    Obama has already tackled the Twitter and Facebook landscapes, amassing over 11.7 million followers and 24.3 million likes respectively. And last year, the President spread his social reach even more by opening up a Foursquare account in August and joining Tumblr in October.

    Like all of those social accounts, Obama’s campaign staff will be the ones actually uploading the content. But the Instagram account with give Obama fans, political junkies, or simply interested citizens a somewhat inside look into the campaign trail.

  • Instagram 2.0 Adds Live Filtering, Higher Resolution Photos

    Last month, photo sharing app Instagram hit an impressive milestone: 150 million photos shared by over 7 million users. To put this into context, at the same point in their early life, both Twitter and Facebook had yet to reach 1 million users.

    Today, Instagram is launching their most ambitious update to date, version 2.0, just in time for their 1-year birthday in October.

    The biggest change in the new Instagram is the live filtering. Unlike the old version where you had to snap a photo and then apply one of the filters, Instagram 2.0 allows you to apply the filter to the in-app camera on the fly. Basically you get to see your shot in various different formats before you even take it.

    Once you take a photo, you can change the filter afterwards, even returning a photo back to normal after snapped with a filter in place.

    This could encourage users to use the in-app camera, instead of choosing to snap photos with the iPhone camera and import them into Instagram for filtering.

    Speaking of filters, v2.0 adds four news filters: Amaro, Rise, Hudson and Valencia.

    They have also added instant tilt-shift so that you can manipulate the focus with selective blur live. The borders that appear on some of the filters like “Nashville” are now optional. You can remove them at any point in the photo-taking process.

    Another big change is that Instagram has upped the resolution of the photos that you take using the app. It’s important to note that the photos will still be 612 x 612 when shared and viewed with the app, but they will be much higher-res when saved to your device after you upload them. This means that your Instagram-filtered photos will be accessible only to you as high-res –

    High-resolution versions of your Instagram photos are saved to your device’s camera roll after you upload the photo to Instagram. This means that you are the only one with access to high-resolution versions of your photos. The resolution of these photos is 1936×1936 on the iPhone4 and 1536×1536 on the iPhone3GS (the resolution of photos uploaded to the app is 612×612). Others will not be able to access your high-resolution photos on Instagram share pages or third-party websites/apps that use our API.

    Instagram is still only available on iOS, much to the chagrin of Android users. This update is supported by iPhone 3GS and 4, iPod Touch, and both iPads.

    @instagram
    Instagram    Introducing Instagram v2.0: http://t.co/J4FS5CDS 2 hours ago via Assistly · powered by @socialditto

  • Instagram Milestone: 150 Million Photos

    I’ll preface this post by saying that I am a total Instagram fanboy. No shame. What I first downloaded on a whim has earned a place on my mobile device home screen. It’s an app that I find myself checking more and more every day.

    When I first heard about Instagram, I said, “Oh, so a free Hipstamatic…sounds good.” I quickly realized that Instagram is providing more than just photo filtering (which is fun). Instagram is a full-fledged social network, a fun and satisfying one at that.

    With its own photo-news feed, comments, likes, hashtag capabilities, “@” tagging, and geotagging, it has won the hearts of many more than just this writer. Now over 7 million users strong, the application has just hit another milestone.

    Instagram announced today on their blog that they have just surpassed 150 million photos shared. They also noted that 15 new photos roll in per second.

    Thank you for sharing your stories through Instagram. Here’s to another 150 million. (If you want to help us get there, take a look at our Jobs page – we’re hiring!)

    That “we’re hiring” blip is interesting because one of the things people find so charming about the company is their tiny workforce. Until just recently, the company had been able to run with just 4 employees. A few days ago AdWeek reported that they had just hired their 5th employee, Jessica Zollman, as their “community evangelist.”

    Here’s photo #150,000,000, as snapped by @janefot

    Instagram is being used by celebrities, businesses and news organizations as well. Companies like Kate Spade and new outlets like NBC and CNN have their own accounts. Justin Bieber almost crashed the servers when he tweeted out his first Instagram pic a couple of weeks ago.

    Remember that 7 million user stat? That’s even more impressive than you think. As VentureBeat points out, Instagram just launched last October. At this point in their lives, neither Facebook nor Twitter had even reached 1 million users.

  • Look out Flickr – Photobucket Is Making a Comeback

    Remember photo sharing website Photobucket? The service slid off the radar for a few years, but according to company CEO Tom Munro, it’s back and ready to compete.

    What photo sharing site do you use most often? Let us know.

    For a quick history lesson, Photobucket was founded back in 2003 and really became a website for hosting image and video content on Myspace. News Corporation acquired it in 2007, and as Munro explained to us, even though Photobucket and Myspace were together under the same ownership, they, ironically, didn’t integrate.

    What’s even more ironic is that Myspace built its own photo hosting solution. However, because of its association with Myspace, Photobucket wasn’t able to make any connections with Facebook. Since the service was declining, Fox wanted to sell it.

    In December of 2009, Photobucket spun out from News Corp. and merged with mobile company Ontela. Munro says this move was “the beginning of the road for the turning point.”

    This merger with Ontela brought Photobucket not only investors, which funded the spinout, but it also brought mobile technology and patents. In addition to this, Ontela brought 20 million online monthly unique visitors in the U.S.

    “What we saw is, early on with Ontela, that photos were moving to mobile devices,” said Munro.

    Previously, Photobucket was Web-focused, but with Ontela, the company began to target mobile. Through this focus, the company has developed apps such as the photo-filtering app Snapbucket and built up its mobile user base to nearly 6 million.

    Now, the company wants to tie these goals together and provide a “ubiquitous experience between Web and mobile.”

    Photobucket is also reinventing itself in other areas such as its recent partnership with Twitter. As part of the partnership, Photobucket will host the images that users upload to Twitter. Munro told us that the partnership would not only bring in revenue, but that it would also help drive awareness and traffic since every photo will have a caption that says, “Powered by Photobucket.”

    “From a branding perspective, it really helps bring some of that mojo back that Photobucket had,” he said.

    He went on to say that they were currently in talks with other companies in regards to more partnerships.

    As for the future of Photobucket, Munro indicated that the service would make advances in video. He said they had noticed a 300 percent increase in video uploads in the last 3 months and that they believed this trend would continue. They are planning to add a video feature to Snapbucket soon as well.

    “It a picture is worth 1,000 words, then a video has to be exponentially more,” he added.

    It appears that Photobucket is on the right track to making a full comeback, but the road getting there was anything but easy. Munro said, “In some ways, I think a spin off is even more difficult than even a startup.”

    He told us that the biggest challenge was changing the culture from a corporate one to one that was innovative and more aligned with a startup. To help encourage this new environment, Photobucket shuts down for a week every six months to concentrate only on innovative products. The company has seen new apps and services born as a result of this endeavor.

    Do you think Photobucket is moving in the right direction?

  • Facebook Photo Sharing App Coming Soon?

    It appears Facebook may want users to do more with photos, as leaked images and documents suggest that the social network is on the verge of unveiling its own photo sharing app for the iPhone.

    TechCrunch has obtained “roughly 50 MB of images and documents outlining the entire thing.” According to their post, the new photo sharing app looks incredible. The words used are “killer,” “awesome” and “amazing” – so that sounds promising.

    The app, possibly titled “Hovertown” or “Withpeople,” is built on Facebook’s social graph but looks to be a standalone application as of right now. It’s likely that the app would be integrated into the Facebook iPhone app and even the main website eventually.

    TechCrunch says that it looks like a hybrid of Path, Instagram and Color, which is pretty exciting to me considering how much of an Instagram fan I’ve become as of late. If that’s the case, the new app would promote seamless sharing with public groups, private groups and would contain cool filters and stuff, right?

    This all sounds awesome, but I hope the photo sharing app works better than the actual Facebook app for iPhone. I’m only speaking from my own personal experience, but I’ve found that app to be a buggy mess at times.

    And if this new app is launched relatively soon, one can only imagine it will be talked about as some sort of response to the news that Twitter will be deeply integrated into iOS 5. That move, as discussed, could change the world of mobile application development on the iPhone.

    A couple of weeks ago, Twitter announced its partnership with PhotoBucket to provide users with a native photo uploading service. This will allow users to upload photos and attach them directly to their tweets without using a third-party service like yfrog or twitpic.

  • Water for Elephants, Color App Partner Up for Premiere

    The new film “Water for Elephants” releases wide next Friday, but excited fans will have the chance to experience the world premiere much sooner.

    @color
    Color    Fox, Color App Partner for ‘Water for Elephants’ Premiere (Exclusive) – The Hollywood Reporter http://t.co/VnD0gaO 9 hours ago via Tweet Button · powered by @socialditto

    20th Century Fox has teamed up with the much talked about mobile app Color to provide fans a look into the premiere, both from the perspective of the fans outside as well as the people inside. Photos taken at the premiere, which is Sunday at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York, will be instantly shared with those in the vicinity in a “Water for Elephants Premiere Group” or “conversation.”

    You may ask how this benefits you, if you can’t make it to the NYC premiere on Sunday. Well, the aggregated content from the premiere will be streamed online at the site www.color.com/waterforelephants. Currently, the site asks us to come back Sunday when photos will start streaming at 4:30, when the stars begin to arrive. The site will also have an exclusive clip of the film available at 4 pm EST.

    “Water For Elephants” is based on a massively popular novel of the same title by Sara Gruen.  The film stars Reese Witherspoon, Chritoph Waltz (Oooh, That’s a Bingo!) and up from the teeny vampire ranks, Robert Pattinson.

    Not only will the shared photos come from fans on the outside, but Fox is having some of the producers and talent from the film take photos using the app, which should show fans the red carpet walk from the perspective of the stars.

    The Hollywood Reporter talked to Color co-founder Peter Pham:

    “With such a big following of Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon, people will be camping out just to get to the front of the barricades,” Color co-founder Peter Pham tells THR, who likened the app to a “visual Twitter.” “It’ll give you a really good sense of what it’s like from the fan’s perspective. It’s not the high-def professional cameraman taking the photos perched in a specific spot.”

    This most likely will not be the last time the entertainment industry calls upon Color or similar apps down the road.  Photo sharing, especially if those streams are broadcast to people at home, could give fans a look at concerts, premieres and award shows from the inside perspective.  And for celebriphiles, the inside perspective is what is most desired. 

  • Facebook Photo Sharing More Popular With Women

    Women who base their self worth on their appearance share more photos on Facebook and have a larger network of friends, according to new research from the University of Buffalo.

    Michael A. Stefanone, PhD, says the results suggest women identify more strongly with their image and appearance, and use Facebook as a way to compete for attention.


    “The results suggest persistent differences in the behavior of men and women that result from a cultural focus on female image and appearance,” said Stefanone.

    In the study, 311 participants with an average age of 23.3 years — 49.8 percent of whom were female — completed a questionnaire measuring their contingencies of self worth. They were also asked about their typical behaviors on Facebook.

    “Those whose self esteem is based on public-based contingencies (defined here as others’ approval, physical appearance and outdoing others in competition) were more involved in online photo sharing, and those whose self-worth is most contingent on appearance have a higher intensity of online photo sharing,” said Stefanone.

    The purpose of the study was to investigate variables that explain specific online behavior on social network sites. Among other things, the team looked at the amount of time subjects spent managing profiles, the number of photos they shared, the size of their online networks and how promiscuous they were in terms of “friending” behavior.

    “Although it’s stereotypical and might have been predicted,” he says, “it is disappointing to me that in the year 2011 so many young women continue to assert their self worth via their physical appearance — in this case, by posting photos of themselves on Facebook as a form of advertisement.”

    “Perhaps this reflects the distorted value pegged to women’s looks throughout the popular culture and in reality programming from ‘The Bachelor’ to ‘Keeping Up with the Kardashians.’”

    The study, “Contingencies of Self-Worth and Social-Networking-Site Behavior,”is published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking.

  • Facebook Testing Facial Detection for Tagging in Photos

    Facebook is testing some new features for photos. One such feature is a new way of tagging people.

    "People love tagging their friends and family in photos, but we’ve heard that it can be a tedious process. You now can add tags with just a couple of clicks directly from your home page and other sections of the site, using the same face detection technology that cameras have used for years," explains Facebook’s new product manager for Photos, Sam Odio. "We’re running a limited test of this technology so you may not see it yet."

    New Facebook Photo Tagging Feature Being Tested"With this new feature, tagging is faster since you don’t need to select a face," says Odio. "It’s already selected for you, just like those rectangles you see around your friends’ faces when you take a photo with a modern digital camera. All that’s left for you to do is type a name and hit enter."

    Odio is the founder of Divvyshot, which Facebook acquired in early April, at which point he told us, "We’re thrilled to be joining the Facebook team and look forward to kicking ass there."

    According to Odio, 99% of people using Facebook have uploaded at least one photo, and over 100 million photos are uploaded every day.

    Update: I orginally referred to what they’re doing as facial recognition, but it’s actually detection. It recognizes that there is a face, but not necessarily who that face belongs to (so far at least). Face.com is already doing facial recognition for Facebook, however. See that here.

  • Looking at Polaroid’s Photo Sharing Service

    A couple months ago Polaroid launched a new online photo and video sharing service called Polaroid Studio. It didn’t initially receive a whole lot of buzz, but WebProNews stopped by their exhibit at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas earlier this month, and got a look at just what Polaroid Studio’s all about.

    You can use the service to upload photos or videos, but it offers a unique feature in that you can customize what your photo albums look like. You can choose backgrounds, pick how many photos you want to display across, up and down, etc.

    Social media hounds may particularly like the Facebook app, which lets you easily import the photos into Facebook from Polaroid Studio. The site also has a store right in it where you can purchase various items with your photos on them. If you want a coffee mug, a Calendar, playing cards, or whatever, look no further than the site where you are already keeping your photos. That’s kind of convenient.

    The service is still young, but so far it claims already over 62 million photos. They are also about to launch a pro version for professional photographers that they will be able to take and brand as their own.

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