Photosharing

Photosharing is the process of uploading digital photos online and sharing them, publicly or privately, with other users. Sharing can take place on various media platforms, such as websites or applications that have the ability to upload and display photos. The term sharing is defined as others having the ability to view photos, but may or may not have the opportunity to obtain the photos for personal use, depending on the copyright status.

In public relations, advertising, and marketing, photosharing is implemented as a way to visually communicate with stakeholders. High-quality photos can be uploaded and shared—free of charge. This visually stimulating tactic can add a competitive advantage to a communication plan. Starbucks is an example of an organization that is using Instagram, a photosharing application, to share photos to its followers from events at retail locations and its headquarters. Photosharing allows an organization to provide visual proof of its dedication to its stakeholders.

Photosharing websites were created in the early 1990s, due to the popularization of digital cameras. For the first time, digital cameras allowed consumers to upload pictures directly from their camera to their computers in one step. Because of this, sites were created to store uploaded photos. These sites, such as http://KodakGallery.com and http://Shutterfly.com, allow users to create online photo albums, edit photos, and order photos through local drugstores or have photos sent directly to them. Desktop photo management applications, such as iPhoto, allow users to edit photos, display photos in albums and in a chronological view, and share photos through preset features. Basic photosharing can be found on numerous websites that offer peer-to-peer, peer-to-server-to-peer, and peer-to-browser networking. Examples of these sites include http://Flickr.com, http://Photobucket.com, http://Picasa.com, http://Snapfish.com, and http://Smugmug.com.

Photosharing recently advanced the digital camera and the Internet by including the ability to use portable devices, such as smartphones. Users of smartphones, such as the iPhone, can automatically transfer photos taken by the phone and upload them to a photosharing site; the most prominent is Instagram. Instagram is a free photosharing program that allows users to take a photo, edit it with various preset filters, and share it among a variety of social networking sites. Another type of photosharing is known as social network photosharing. Users share captured photos on social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.

Many organizations are not only uploading photos to a photosharing site, they are also adding captions, tags, and comments to these photos. Including metatags increases the chance of a photo appearing in a search engine. Other components to include along with the photo are company names, product names, geographic areas, and descriptions of the photos.