3 ms·

Does it have a social aspect? The pitch seems to be all "you ... your photos ... you decide ... your photos", with no mention of sharing. What I really have in

• jmathai 14y ago
  We haven't been very focused on sharing. We do let you post out to Twitter and Facebook though. But it's not replacement for the Flickr or Instagram communities. We've been a little slower on adding social features right in the platform. With very limited resources it just isn't high on our priority list. On a side note, I'm not convinced the size of the sharing market is as big and can be sustained as many people think (besides Facebook). I think the vast majority of photos which people place a lot of value on are ones they share with specific family and friends (this excludes photos of sunsets, lattes, and cats). The safekeeping of these photos is a big deal. There's a lot going on with private social networks which I think is interesting but the chicken/egg problem for small networks is BIG. ANYWAYS, the project is open sourced for a reason. We've built and are focused on the platform and safekeeping of photos. Pure social features may or may not find their way in but anyone can fork and add it. We provide a very stable and robust base to work off of.
  • graue 14y ago
    > I think the vast majority of photos which people place a lot of value on are ones they share with specific family and friends Hmm, perhaps, but this is still sharing just the same, no? I guess I don't understand the value proposition here. Maybe I'm not the target audience. The way I see it, there are three things I want to do with my photos: 1. Look at them myself. 2. Back them up. 3. Share them with other people (publicly or privately). I can do #1 without uploading them to the internet at all. I mean, I can do that right on my camera. Or on my smartphone in the Gallery app. This is kind of a built-in feature of taking photos. For #2 I don't need a service that's specific to photos. Direct to Dropbox works fine, or a generic backup solution like Carbonite, Mozy, etc. And backups aren't as exciting as sharing, for about the same reason taking out a new insurance policy isn't as exciting as going to a club. And #3, you don't really do. Granted, I'm thinking like a young person. I think that for the under 25 crowd (which I am not quite a member of anymore), most photos are impermanent, like teardrops in rain. They have meaning in the moment, which is squandered and lost if they are not shared. On the other hand, if I were a parent saving pics of my kids growing up, maybe I would want this. You've solved use case #2 above and put a somewhat more convenient browsing interface on it. It still seems a little unclear, but maybe I'm just not the target audience.
    • jmathai 14y ago
      Valid points. It's been extremely difficult working on our messaging. I think we're getting closer though. The new hosted service is about to be relaunched and we've put a lot of time into the messaging. That being said, we're combining 1, 2 and 3. You could look at all your photos, perhaps. But most likely not on your mobile device or tablet unless you're using some online service. Backups aren't difficult but the fact is most people don't do them or have them. If your backups are just for backup purposes then it needs to be something automatic that you never think about (i.e. Crashplan). But even then it's sort of a black box of content you never ever see. We're approaching it as a way to store, organize, share and backup in one place. As far as the lack of sharing, that'll be addressed here in a few weeks, we hope. And we're leaning heavily on email for private sharing of photos (and of course Facebook). Definitely appreciate the feedback. You're probably not the target audience but it's important that even you can understand the value proposition. If you hear about our release (look for OpenPhoto being rebranded) I'd love to know if you think the new messaging makes it any more clear (jaisen@jmathai.com).