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Have you ever looked at your Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) Flickr account and thought, "Why am I doing this? I can just throw my pics up on Facebook"? If this has crossed your mind, you're not alone. In fact, many photo-sharing sites – Snapfish (NYSE: HPQ), Photobucket, Picasa (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Shutterfly, as well as Flickr – are asking the same questions. With the development and enhancement of photo management capabilities in major social networking websites, niche players need to find new ways to stay relevant.
The situation is still far from grim. Fed by traffic from their behemoth owners, the photo-sharing sites remain substantial forces, and they are currently home to more than 20 billion pictures. There's still plenty of interest in these environments ... which has been bolstered by specific features that make the likes of Flickr attractive to both professional photographers and amateur shooters. The ability to order prints and personalize portfolios, for example, still provides an edge over sites like Facebook and MySpace (NYSE: NEWS).
Nonetheless, the threats from the social networking space are quite real.
Facebook, which counts Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) among its investors, is growing with three times the speed of the top specialty photo websites, according to data from comScore. And, this growth comes with a significant base: Facebook has more than 250 million users. Snapfish and Flickr are far behind, at 70 million and 40 million, respectively.
The decision for the photo-sharing websites seems to be boiling down to beat 'em or join 'em. Some are integrating social networking capabilities. The latest version of Picasa, for example, includes some social media capabilities. Flickr boasts fairly robust social networking functionality, leading its photo-specific peers. On the other hand, Shutterfly and Snapfish are enabling users to share their uploaded photos with blogs, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds, in an attempt to succeed through ease of integration with the online leaders.
Yet, it might be more prudent to stick to the tasks that make the photo-sharing websites most attractive to their active users. Flickr remains popular with photo enthusiasts because of the depth of work available and the quality of the photography. While some sites may help users print photographs from Facebook, smaller photo sizes impair quality. Flickr and its cohorts, on the other hand, can deliver well on customer needs. Sometimes, it's best to do one thing well.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
9-10-2009 @ 2:51AM
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