On the heels of a major upgrade earlier this week that added facial recognition and video-editing features to its Picasa photo management service, Google added a new Explore page today that shows off the most popular public photos uploaded by members. In addition to the featured photos, shown in a 3 X 4 grid, the Explore page also shows the most recent photos uploaded in a slide-show widget. Below, it offers a list of the most popular tags. For instance, here are pictures tagged “New York.”
The Picasa Explore page also has a Where In The World? game that is mashup opf geotagged photos and Google Maps. It shows you a photo and you have to guess where it was taken. If you guess wrong, it tells you how far off you are in kilometers. This is fun for outdoor photos, but when people upload geotagged photos of a generic apartment of a plate of food, it can become tricky.
It is not clear how Picasa chooses what photos to feature, but it is obviously borrowing from Flickr’s Explore page, which shows photos based on its on ‘interestingness” algorithm. I find Flickr’s photos much more interesting than Picasa’s (keep working on that algorithm, fellas). Flickr too has a map mashup that shows geotagged photos on a map (although, it is not a game).
By adding new ways to discover public photos, Picasa is taking on Flickr, Photobucket, and Facebook Photos in a more direct way. Globally, Picasa passed Photobucket in July with 48 million visitors compared to Photobucket’s 43 million, according to comScore. It still trails Facebook Photos (97 million unique visitors) and Flickr (63 million). In the U.S., it is much further behind, with only 8.3 million monthly visitors, compared to 18.3 million for Flickr, 23.5 million for Photobucket, and 25.4 million fopr Facebook Photos.
hmm..that page sucks and “interesting pics” they are showing also
Cool changes. I’ve been working with newspaper publishers to use cloud services for photos and content; and outputting the paper as the end product. FlickR and Picasa offer professional choices. Facebook does not upload hi-res.
This aside, recognizing people’s faces, this may raise privacy concerns. In advising publishers, we may have to set privileges to avoid creating alarm among photo subjects.
I think they are missing the option to turn photos into more valuable content by adding text structures, or making them multimedia. This would be true value added.
http://www.klatcher.com/klatch....._Plan_2008
I can’t wait to play the game. All you other blog-trollers, check this one out. Good webclip from the comedy side of huff-post: http://www.236.com/video/2008/.....s_8755.php
@ E. This is most likely Google pointing a gun at Flickr. I’ve honestly never met anyone that uses Picasa though. Have you?
true to an extent….Picasa isn’t a popular google service till now…but scene may change any moment
When you meet people do you really ask what photo sharing site they use? That would make an interesting first impression.
Picasa will definitely get a lot of traction after this step…They somehow could not grab big attention,besides being a healthy service
Google is the way to go ! Picasa is good, it is like a free photoshop with minimum features to me.
So Picasa will know more about me and my friends than I do, and retain a memory of them long after I’ve gone senile. I suppose by that time “Google Drool Bucket Tending Robot” will be out and I’ll be taken care of in my old age.
Picasa is a fantastic tool, I’ve used it for years. One problem it had was that it was ugly compared to Flickr, with the last round of updates it looks a lot fresher.
They have the beta of the next release: Picasa 3, brilliant for people who take lots of photos and want a quick and easy way to upload them for people to view.
This is needed, in terms of competition. I think Flickr has been lazy ever since they were acquired by Flickr. They’ve released very few innovations or even renovations since they were acquired by Yahoo!
you can give more ideas to the caterina and david filo since u think their team is lazy. come one driftwood, you can do it!
There’s just not much innovative coming from Flickr anymore, and if you disagree please tell me some things.
The improvement I can think that they’ve done recently is to redesign their slide show and more stats.
The only customization options they’ve given customers is redesigning the main page from a choice of a couple templates and then choosing sets/collections.
I’m just saying, competition is good.
The Bogdog strikes again!
It is Google that provides the maps ! About time Picasa got this feature.
Well that and flickr has been taking forever to load for me over the past few days.
Flickr gets a lot of it’s traffic from…wait for it…Google search. So, the only way Google can match that, is pumping more of it’s search traffic towards the photos stored on picasa. People are too stuck on search as their inteface for the web.
And, to be honest, I can’t see Google’s share (33% per comScore a few months ago) of their own algorithmic results going to far north without a lot of publishers getting very upset. Still, it’s a good first step.
Besides, guys:
http://www.panoramio.com/
Google has a “flickr competitor” now, they’re creating the same branding nightmare Yahoo Photos & Flickr had. Ideally, they move to one brand & then they can easily scale to more share…as it is, brand fragmentation in a vertical has never been a winning strategy…MSN Live anyone?
“Flickr gets a lot of it’s traffic from…wait for it…Google search. So, the only way Google can match that, is pumping more of it’s search traffic towards the photos stored on picasa.”
— Heard about organic results? Google cant tamper with it, even if that means shutting picasa down. Google has kept up the democracy spirit of internet and thats why its my default search engine.
Picasa rocks.
lame. picasa is just lame. flickr forever.
I’ve always liked the picasa tool. As more innovative technologies get added to picasa, I look forward to utilizing them.
Alvira Khan
Florida Atlantic University
FAU Alumni
It’s ridiculous that they still have a file storage limit of 1024 MB.