Update: When asked what the company is working on, Expono told us “we are working on improving photo browsing (bigger better photos) and new ways users can explore public/friend photos.”
Expono (@expono) is a relatively new photo sharing website that recently went live with a slew of many extensive features you won’t find on the most popular media sharing sites such as Flickr.
Expono lets you upload, manage, geo-tag, backup, embed and share your photos with social media sites such as FriendFeed, Facebook, and Twitter.
If you want to share your photos via Facebook, you just follow the simple instructions to connect your FB account with Expono, then you’ll be able to easily share full photos across Facebook. You can also tag friends in photos.
Flickr has just updated its mobile client to show you nearby photos based on your GPS location.
The web-based app can now present you geo-tagged photos within a certain radius of your GPS location. As you move around a city, you’ll have to manually refresh the site to see updated photos in your location.
The mobile app is not as in-depth as the PC browser version in terms of features. The PC version map is more interactive as it lets you base your search on the distance from the center point, the time the photo was taken, or by “interestingness”. Also, you can’t toggle the map between Satellite, Map and Hybrid modes on the mobile version, for that, you’ll need to download Google Maps or another mobile mapping application such as the new MapQuest for iPhone.
The app could be useful if you are near landmarks or a recent past event.
Currently, the feature only works on the iPhone (requires OS 3.0) and Android powered devices.
The new feature is web-based and does not require you to install any app. You can access it from http://m.flickr.com by clicking the “Photos taken nearby” link. Unfortunately, the feature requires you to be logged into Flickr to use it.
Flickr has announced it has opened up Flickr Video uploading to all members, and not only premium paid members anymore. Videos are still capped at 90 seconds. As an added incentive for premium users, they can upload HD videos, which can be viewed by anyone. Any Flickr member can also submit his or her own content to the Flickr Clock which effectively lets anyone view chronologically what is going on around the world in different times with pictures and videos. You can also check out the Flickr Map which lets you find geo-tagged photos and videos.
Zoomandgo is a social geo location and photo sharing community where users simply post photos, videos from their location with their mobile phone, or directly from the website. Users can rate different submissions and the most popular submissions appear on the interactive map on the homepage and on the Most Popular section. According to Comscore, the service is getting about 5,000 uniques per month and this figure has been steady for months. Zoomandgo’s business model is income only generated from advertising on the site and no premium service is available, probably because of the lack of differentiation.
This market is a very difficult one that is completely dominated by Flickr (a Yahoo owned company). You can essentially do everything on Flickr now, upload videos and traditional photos, and post your location with geo-tags. There are also plenty of mobile versions available for Flickr, making it one of the most comprehensive solutions to online geo photo sharing. One of the things Flickr should do is to support live video mobile streaming now, before YouTube gets to it first, which is rumored to be coming mid 2009.
For a new player to really get some market share in this market, it simply needs to be different, and right now, there aren’t many ways for that to happen as all the sites essentially offer the same features and advantages. A few years ago there could have been differentiation, for example, before the wide availability of mobile support. I see Zoomandgo going under because it has failed to gain traction and its simply not different, just being realistic.
Update: When asked what the company is working on, Expono told us “we are working on improving photo browsing (bigger better photos) and new ways users can explore public/friend photos.”
