Iâve received two online photo albums today from different friends of mine and both used Picasa Web Albums. I hadnât told either of them about Picasa (though Iâve told lots of other folks about Picasa!)
While there hasnât been a lot of coverage of it, my guess is that Picasa Web Albums is slowly becoming a gorilla in the online photo sharing space because of the quality of the Picasa client and because of itâs tight integration with Picasa Web Albums. I donât have any basis for this claim other than 1) I keep coming across more people using Picasa and 2) Iâm involved in product development and I think I can recognize a âhitâ product when I see one.
Quiet âhitsâ â as in successful products and companies that arenât spotlight-seeking and maybe arenât even that âsexyâ â are often the most interesting ones.
Brent asked me how Picasa compares to Flickr. My response:
Flickr may be better for some things (larger critical mass of users, better for bloggers IMO, flickr used by a lot of âinfluentialsâ?, thereâs a social network built-in), but for the sequence of 1) take photographs, 2) import them into computer and 3) share them with my family and friends, the Picasa experience kills the Flickr experience.
From Picasaâs camera import capabilities, to the ease with which photos can be corrected, selected and, otherwise, prepped to be shared, to the two click upload process (which takes care of resizing your photographs and more subtle issues like correctly handling albums that get uploaded in multiple parts) to Picasawebâs actual interface for viewing photographs.
Maybe itâs unfair to compare Picasa and Flickr when it comes to the camera->computer upload and the computer->web upload steps, because Flickr doesnât really contend in those areas at all (somewhat in the computer-web upload area, but their little uploader client is almost a non-contender). But even if you compare the web interfaces themselves, Picasawebâs interface, I think, puts flickrâs to shame. It uses keyboard shortcuts so when Iâm in album or slideshow mode, I can zip through photographs quickly. It seems to pre-cache the next few images so it feels faster than flickr. And best of all, they dynamically resize the image so regardless of the size of my monitor, the image fills most of the page â this is a big one!
Rakesh Agrawal is the CEO of Houston-based SnapStream. You can read more from his personal blog at rake.sh/blog.
I prefer it to Flickr and want to get my photos up there… It’s easier for the novice to use and easier for the novice to view. Just wish the URL was more memorable for the uninitiated:
photos.google.com/davezatz versus
picasaweb.google.com/davezatz/
I completely agree on the awkward site URL. But since I upload most of my albums as “unlisted” and Google sticks that hash at the end of URLs to “unlisted” albums, the only way for me to pass around URLs is through a copy/paste.
On a side note, I do prefer Picasa’s method of albums being private versus Flickr’s. Again, Picasa is much easier for novices here because it doesn’t require the person you’re sharing photos with to sign-up for an account.
I appreciate Google/Picasa because they get what other internet companies don’t always get. They get that internet users want to be able to share their content in whatever form they want. Sometimes that means having people log directly into Picasaweb, other times it means having an embedded slideshow on a blog, other times it means access via a cell phone.
Picasa is also a solid, easy-to-use, and not over-featured client on the desktop side.
Someone needs to write a TiVo app that will interface to picasaweb the same way it interfaces to Y! Photos.
Have you tried Tabblo? http://www.tabblo.com. I’ve used them a few times, and it is a pretty good interface (remarkable for being only web-based). I took a (very brief) look at Picasa Web Albums; it seems similar.
And no, I don’t work for them – this is an honest recommendation!