A photo sharing services review

I've not heard of any of them besides Flickr and Smugmug. I'm a well connected guy so imho if I haven't heard of them before now then they're not worth my time. There's a reason why Flickr is still top imho. Everyone knows of it. Want proof? I was out on a job yesterday and photos of that appeared on Flickr in a few hours by random people in Liverpool. I doubt you'd get that on any of those other sites.
 
That you haven't heard of them doesn't mean it's a bad service.
It's almost like saying your knowledge about photographic equipment brands is very good but that you haven't heard of anything else than Canon or Nikon. No offense meant.

Some people don't share their shots to get public exposure but to share shots with friends and family. For those that review might come in handy.
 
No it doesn't, but then it does mean that its not a popular service. I subscribe to del.icio.us's popular rss feed so I get to see what is popular on the net on daily basis. I don't recall seeing these sites there. So its slightly different than just knowing about 2 sites. Quick comparison. On del.icio.us the site that article recommends, dotphoto, has been bookmarked by about 239 people. Flickr, however, over 42,000. Now yes you can say "Popular != Good" but tbh Flickr is good, well established and does the job. My point was simply that if they were actually really as good as that article suggests then more than 239 people would have bookmarked it and it would have been slightly more popular. Over 900 people on del.icio.us have bookmarked my HDR guide.

If you want to share with friends and family only Flickr has that in place.
 
Well, popularity isn't such a good quality indicator on the web in all cases as it might seem.
It's similar with search engines - Google's great, but Yahoo and Microsoft's Live search isn't too bad either. And there are others that give acceptable results too.

Now, I don't mean to say that you should dump your service of choice, but there might be some people here who are looking for something and maybe Flickr doesn't feel all that cozy for them.
In short, I'm not saying Flickr is bad or anything like that. Just that it's not the only choice that's worth exploring.
 
Actually I'd say the services I use are a great indicator of popular things on the web. They're so fast. Muxtape, for example, appeared out of nowhere and everyone was using it a day after they launched. It was big news on the web. The point I'm trying to make is that if these services were all that then it would be reflected by Digg / del.icio.us / Stumble Upon etc. Its the whole point of these services. I've seen bad things become popular and I've seen good things become popular. What does it say about something when its just not popular?
 
I'm not saying you're not using them popular services, I use them too.

But some of the services in the review are popular (considering the amount of shots shared on some of these), they're just not the most popular ones from the bunch, apparently.
Sometimes, it's about when you come out and how good your own and viral advertising is.

Don't forget that new things are popping up every now and then too, but when something like Flickr and Google is already established as well as they are, then it's nearly impossible to beat them.

I use Flickr for some photo sharing, Google for almost all of my searches online and imageshack for hosting images I want to share on various forums, but there are alternatives that have something the services I (or you) don't have.
Besides, if the service I use now fails me when I expect it to serve well or when I feel I could use something with more/different features, then I'll search for alternatives. I'd bet I'm not alone.
 
Ok, missing the point :) Digg & del.icio.us are there so that when these new services come out, and are actually really good, they get rated by the users. Either by the number of people bookmarking them or by people "digging" them. That way you get to hear about whats new and cool on the web of which at least one of these isn't. So let me put it this way. You've got this 1 review saying that dotPhoto is better than Flickr. dotPhoto having been bookmarked about 239 times and Flickr over 40,000. My HDR guide in less than one day was bookmarked over 500 times. IMHO this all comes down to this one guy thinking dotPhoto is better than Flickr, but I would say that it seems like the web disagrees with him. Sure some others might find it better but on the whole I would have to disagree with this review.
 
Well, I don't think I've wrote anywhere that I agree with the review, its results or that people should switch or make their decision based on the review.

But letting people know someone compared these services and wrote something about them from experience might be helpful to some of them. That is all.

Btw., I use Digg almost daily, most of the other similar services I don't care about, because the layouts of those are just too cluttered.

I suppose that's one of the reasons why some sites are so popular - Flickr and Google are fairly plain, almost any user who's not impaired in some way should be able to orientate on them pretty fast.
del.icio.us - horrible o.O, but many don't seem to mind the clutter on the main page.
Stumble upon - hm, just might start using it, although it seems to be just another Digg.
Then again, sometimes it's the content and not the looks that sells the product. Like Tech Republic - there are almost too many links on every page of that site, but it's a pretty decent resource.
 
You asked for comments, I gave comments :) del.icio.us isn't a site you use per say. At least not in the conventional sense. I subscribe to its 'popular' rss feed just to keep up-to-date on things on the web. Digg is great but essentially limited to certain topics, which is why del.icio.us beats it there. Its all about bookmarking really. Great when you get the extension for Firefox to replace your normal bookmarks. I don't use Stumble Upon as I get my updates from the other 2.

Funny thing about this review, it doesn't mention Zoomr which is essentially Flickr's rival. They forgot Google too.
 
Ah well, it's just that your comment - http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showpost.php?p=612922&postcount=2 had a discouraging air around it, so I thought I'd try to freshen it up with some positivism.
It's probably the words 'not worth my time' that got me rolling.

I was hoping that people would comment more on the actual services than the review itself. First hand experience with the alternatives and such.
 
Ah, I didn't see the list on the side. Yes I've heard of Pbase and Photobucket too. Still missing Zoomr & Google's Picasa which are two quite big services.
 
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