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Four Amazing Photosharing Alternatives to Facebook and Flickr
It's been more than a century since photography knocked on our doors but it still remains a powerful to tool to convey emotions and feelings. It is one of the most expressive and enduring way for us to capture and share experiences. It's hardly strikes as a surprise when we take note of the fact that photo sharing sites were some of the first social sites to hit the web. People love to click pictures and then share them with their friends and family.
In the present times, Facebook, Flickr and Google Picassa dominate the photo-sharing websites' space on the internet. These sites provide users a great, easy-to-use platform to share photographs and videos with their friends and family, online acquaintances and even random people on the web. Now in case, you are kind of bored with these same websites after using them a repetitively, there are several other photo sharing alternatives available on the web.
Let's take look at some of them
SmugMug
It is paid photosharing service on the web. Mashable says its prime focus is making easy for users to showcase and organise pictures - whether they want to sell them or not. There are no bandwidth caps and you can upload and share an unlimited no. of photos. Your photos can password-protected, you can add watermarks, and share them on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr quite easily.
Now the thing with this service is that it is paid. There are Basic, Power and Pro versions of SmugMug and they are priced in ascending order. SmugMug Pro is ideal for a professional photographer who can avail the service for $20 a month or $150 a year and also avail tons of e-commerce options. It also has dedicated apps for iPhone, Android, and iPad.
Smugmug(dot)com
Instagram is an easy-to-use iPhone app using which the users can upload photos on Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr, and Foursquare. Filters and customizations can be easily applied to these photos. The application is compatible with any iPhone or iPod Touch running Ios 3.1.2 or above. What sets it apart from its counterparts is its ease of sharing, browsing and commenting. The best thing about it is that comes for free.
Instagram had more than 100,000 downloads in its first week of release.
Instagr(dot)am
deviantArt
Often abbreviated as dA, deviantArt is an online community showcasing various forms of user-made artwork. Headquartered in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles, devianArt aims to provide a place for any artist to exhibit and discuss works of arts. Photography finds a dedicated spot in this website.
devianArt consists of 14.5 million registered members and receives about 1,40,000 submissions each day. It is a free service and is gaining rapid popularity on the web.
Deviantart(dot)com
picplz
It is a photosharing app that makes sharing of photos on Facebook and Twitter like a walk in the park. Users can browse, comment and upload photos using this website. However, the core focus of this service is the mobile phone. It enables users to apply amazing photo effects and turn “average into amazing” as is claimed on its website. 'Cross Process', 'The 70s', 'Russian Toy Camera' etc. are some of the effects to choose from.
Picplz is free and is available in the App Store or Android Market.
Predictions – Biggest Exits in Indian Internet Space in coming years
There would be multiple Consolidations, Mergers, Change of Strategies by lot of VC-invested companies by 2015.
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Product based eCommerce companies:
Lot of interest seen in recent times by VCs. LetsBuy, Snapdeal, FashionAndYou, Flipkart, and so on, Infibeam as well (though still not part of any portfolio yet). Future of eCommerce companies will depend completely on two factors:
Lot of interest seen in recent times by VCs. LetsBuy, Snapdeal, FashionAndYou, Flipkart, and so on, Infibeam as well (though still not part of any portfolio yet). Future of eCommerce companies will depend completely on two factors:
- Internet penetration in India > 200 Mn by that time
- Improvement in eCommerce transactions (Infrastructure + User Comfort)
The rate at which investments are made are much higher than rate of growth of both the factors mentioned above – which in a way may be good – as all invested companies will act as catalyst in growth and get new set consumers on-board.
If we see an IPO exit for atleast one of product based eCommerce companies that will be awesome; One or Two VCs in India (without naming any here) have been actively investing in eCommerce space. There may be a very high possibility that they may merge two or more portfolio companies to form an large entity, which may be just a good acquisition target for Amazon or an IPO exit.
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Group Buying companies:
Was surprised (like many others?) with GroupOn‘s decision of acquiring SoSasta. There are established players in Group Buying space, I’m sure GroupOn has seen some merit and synergies. For existing leading players like SnapDeal, Deals and You and Taggle – they will continue to grow and have to.
Was surprised (like many others?) with GroupOn‘s decision of acquiring SoSasta. There are established players in Group Buying space, I’m sure GroupOn has seen some merit and synergies. For existing leading players like SnapDeal, Deals and You and Taggle – they will continue to grow and have to.
Possible exit for them will be Google (since they are starting with Google Offers) or an acquisition by eBay; or maybe GroupOn India may now want to expand presence with one more acquisition. Not to forget that LivingSocial will also come knocking. Now that eBay has ventured into Group Buying space – it has much higher accountability as deals are now served by eBay and not marketplace. eBay India may acquire someone if they decide to have an experienced them to execute this business vertical.
Expect one very large player to enter Group Buying space in next 1-2 months, if well executed – in all probability it may give tough challenge to current market leaders.
Unfortunately many small players will hit the dead pool (few of them have already) due to execution challenges, expansion costs, and lack of operating revenues to keep going as the model is very easy to replicate, but not easy to scale with thin-margins and high acquisition cost.
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Online Travel Companies:
Clear IPOs for Yatra & Cleartrip. Will be great exit for all invested players. GoIbibo and ezeego1 are also leading players in travel domain – Goibibo’s exit may depend on ibibo’s overall plans, ezeego1 may raise capital through markets directly bypassing VC route.
Clear IPOs for Yatra & Cleartrip. Will be great exit for all invested players. GoIbibo and ezeego1 are also leading players in travel domain – Goibibo’s exit may depend on ibibo’s overall plans, ezeego1 may raise capital through markets directly bypassing VC route.
Redbus is promising, they are very high on number of transactions – ticket size may be lower compared to Airline tickets, but % margins will be definitely higher. In all probabilities – Redbus may too hit an IPO or will be an acquisition target for Yatra or Cleartrip (listed travel companies by then as MakeMyTrip has acquired Ticketvala)
I hope someone in Indian Government thinks of the opportunity of listing IRCTC on stock markets.
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Ticketing eCommerce:
BookMyShow will expand to more geographies – they have presence in Malaysia & New Zealand. To get to more such markets, they will require more capital – further investment and definite IPO candidate. Reliance ADAG is trying to make it big in entertainment through BIG – they might knock doors.
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BookMyShow will expand to more geographies – they have presence in Malaysia & New Zealand. To get to more such markets, they will require more capital – further investment and definite IPO candidate. Reliance ADAG is trying to make it big in entertainment through BIG – they might knock doors.
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Technology Companies:
Pubmatic (industry’s first yield optimization player) may get acquired in few years. It faces good competition from AdMeld & Rubicon Project, however none of these yield companies are focusing on small publishers (the long tail) which may be the key to larger success.
Pubmatic (industry’s first yield optimization player) may get acquired in few years. It faces good competition from AdMeld & Rubicon Project, however none of these yield companies are focusing on small publishers (the long tail) which may be the key to larger success.
iYogi by all speculation is IPO bound. Slideshare is leading in its segment and may be a great exit story. Fusion Charts is another one that may be acquired for technology and customers; and so is Martjack.
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Advertising Networks:
Existing players – Tyroo, Komli, Ozone Media, AdMagnet and others. Do not forecast a immediate exit for these players – the number of players in this segment has been same for long time (no new entrants) – and otherwise too existing players seem to looking outside of India, are they hinting saturation of market? The frequency of acquisitions of pure advt-networks has decreased outside India (no big news in so many months?).
Existing players – Tyroo, Komli, Ozone Media, AdMagnet and others. Do not forecast a immediate exit for these players – the number of players in this segment has been same for long time (no new entrants) – and otherwise too existing players seem to looking outside of India, are they hinting saturation of market? The frequency of acquisitions of pure advt-networks has decreased outside India (no big news in so many months?).
There is no distinct advantage over each other and offerings (if Vizisense is treated as product outside of Advt-Network). Would have been great to see an situation like AdMax Network (owns up majority market share in countries they operate – very tough competition to Google as they have leveraged on local language audience which is majority).
Google has played a flattener by opening up its unlimited inventory on Doubleclick exchange through Google Certified AdNetworks program. Post which the publisher development story may have taken some hit, but wondering why have not the Indian Advt Networks integrated on Google’s Doubleclick exchange yet – expand you publisher network!
InMobi which is now the largest mobile advt network (outside of Google/AdMob) – maybe one of the biggest exits through Nasdaq IPO. There is no immediate need for Google to buy another mobile advt network – that leaves IPO as only logical exit unless AOL, Yahoo or Microsoft realize that they haven’t looked at the mobile monetization business seriously.
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Matrimony Portals:
BharatMatrimony (Consim Group) would be going for IPO in coming times. Not aware of any investors in Shaadi.com (although there are in Mauj & Fropper), if business is profitable and there are no investor pressures – unlikely to see an IPO from them (at least before BharatMatrimony).
BharatMatrimony (Consim Group) would be going for IPO in coming times. Not aware of any investors in Shaadi.com (although there are in Mauj & Fropper), if business is profitable and there are no investor pressures – unlikely to see an IPO from them (at least before BharatMatrimony).
Read somewhere that Jeevansathi has abandoned markets in South India (not sure of this), however its already a part of listed InfoEdge group, spin-off very unlikely as numbers are reported as part of InfoEdge.
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No Clear Exits:
SMS GupShup, Guruji, mCommerce companies (PayMate, mChek and others) are few companies I am not convinced of having an clear exit strategy. (Someone do throw light on this)
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SMS GupShup, Guruji, mCommerce companies (PayMate, mChek and others) are few companies I am not convinced of having an clear exit strategy. (Someone do throw light on this)
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Promising Startups:
The next wave of promising startups in India will be product-driven companies. Although the eco-system to fast acceptance of technology products is not so strong right now – it will be in coming years. Emergence of interesting start-ups like Practo, Zaakpay, Grexit, emo2, Workasaur are first steps in that direction.
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The next wave of promising startups in India will be product-driven companies. Although the eco-system to fast acceptance of technology products is not so strong right now – it will be in coming years. Emergence of interesting start-ups like Practo, Zaakpay, Grexit, emo2, Workasaur are first steps in that direction.
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Hoping to see many success in next 5 years! Best Wishes
source: beingpractical
5 Web Technologies and Trends to Watch in 2011
In 2010 we saw the rise of HTML5, the maturation of CSS3, the release of Rails 3.0, and the widespread adoption of the @font-face selector (part of CSS3) — among other things. In short: it was a busy year for advancing web development technologies.
What will 2011 hold?
Below is a list, compiled by Mashable editors of some of the web technologies and trends we think should be on your radar for the coming year. These aren’t all straight up web dev technologies, per se, but they’re all things that will have an impact on website and app development in 2011.
1. jQuery Mobile
jQuery has become practically synonymous with JavaScript, in large part because of its extensibility, ease of use and strong project leadership. With the goal of being a touch-optimized web framework for tablets and smartphones, jQuery Mobile is one of the most visible projects aiming to take cross-platform, cross-device web development for mobile browsers to the next level. As more and more developers consider building apps with HTML5, a solid mobile JavaScript framework becomes more and more enticing. jQuery Mobile has the pedigree to become the de facto JavaScript framework for mobile.
2. Hardware-Accelerated Web Browsers
Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) is lightning fast, thanks to its use of DirectX 10 and hardware acceleration, vastly improving the speed and capabilities of the browser versus its competitors. Thanks to that envelope-pushing from Microsoft, Google and Mozilla are quickly scrambling to match the hardware acceleration capabilities of IE9. Next year, your browser is going to feel a lot faster.
3. Node.js and Server Side JavaScript
The Node.js website describes it as an “evented I/O for V8 JavaScript.” Essentially, it’s a toolkit for writing event-driven servers in JavaScript. What does that mean? In simple terms, it means no waiting around for slow I/O operations to complete before moving on to other operations; and for Node.js specifically, it means doing it all in server side JavaScript. For things like real-time web apps, web crawlers, file uploading, streaming, etc. — where speed is paramount — this is very important. Node.js represents the beginning of what I expect will be a wider spread adoption of server side JavaScript in 2011. For more on what Node.js is and how it works, check out this excellent overview on Simon Willison’s blog.
4. Real-Time Clickstream Sharing
There are tons of ways to share what you’re reading on the Internet — social sites and other online publishing tools made waves this year, with mass integration of share buttons and the gradual adoption of desktop clients, widgets and bookmarklets, which all made sharing easier. Real-time clickstream sharing is the next step in sharing your personal online experience, and 2011 is the year that will decide if the Internet is ready for it or not. Keep on sites like Sitesimon, Voyurl and Dscover.me.
5. NoSQL Databases
NoSQL, a loosely defined term used to describe alternative database engines that generally don’t follow the traditional relational database schemas widely in use, has been on the rise in recent years. Notable
alternative databases that gained attention recently include Google’s BigTable, Amazon’s Dynamo, Apache Cassandra, MongoDB, CouchDB, Voldemort and Riak. Of course, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater — different doesn’t necessarily mean better. There are always trade-offs when choosing one data model over another. As Ted Dziuba wrote, “by replacing MySQL or Postgres with a different, new data store, you have traded a well-enumerated list of limitations and warts for a newer, poorly understood list of limitations and warts.”
Still, the explosive growth of alternative database systems in the past couple of years definitely singles NoSQL out as a web technology trend to watch in 2011.
