Divvyshot, a new Y Combinator company that makes sharing photos between groups very easy, has just launched in private alpha. The site allows groups of users to share full-resolution photos collaboratively both through online galleries and using native clients that will launch in the next few weeks. There are currently 700 invites available, which you can grab here.
Divvyshot albums can be edited by multiple users, and can be set as private (only allowing designated friends to upload photos) or public, which lets anyone upload their photos to the album. All photos are presented at a fairly high resolution on the site, and are also available at their original quality for download (you can also download entire albums at a time as .zip files).
Once the site’s native clients are released (they’re coming for both Mac and Windows), users will be able to simply drag their photos into a designated folder on their desktop, and they’ll be automatically uploaded to the online group albums and to every other group member’s native client.
Founder Sam Odio says that he hasn’t settled on a monetization plan, explaining that he has considered going the SmugMug route and charging for bandwidth/storage. But he’s also thinking of trying to generate revenue by appealing to certain target demographics and then selling them highly relevant customized goods. For example, he believes that Divvyshot will likely appeal to Sorority girls, who may be eager to share their photos between close friends but not on social networks like Facebook. Divvyshot could capitalize on this demographic by selling personalized items (perhaps branded with the sorority’s logo) that featured their photos.
Divvyshot looks nice and seems to work well, but it’s going to have no shortage of competition. There are already quite a few photo sharing sites that allow for group collaboration, and services like Apple’s MobileMe allow for photo sharing through desktop clients (you could even conceivably use something like Dropbox). That said, if it can effectively separate itself by offering a more intuitive (or cheaper) service, it may be able to carve out a niche.
divvyshot sneak peak from Sam O on Vimeo.
these guys never heard of camtasia. very amateurish for anyone to take them serious
Wrong. A screen-capture facility would not have shown what they showed here.
Hey Mike:
Let’s make a deal. Your readers will raise money–PBS style—to keep your site up…
…in exchange for a blood oath to never, ever, ever, ever, EVER mention any Ycombinator story again.
Ycombinator is prom night bra removal clumsy when it comes to its obviousness, and unoriginality.
Please stop dealing with these Hayseeds.
when they trying to follow twitter monetizations plan,I think that would not be a great idea.from so many file photo sharing I dont see something “different about the share photo sharing then famous name Flickr.it is great now for them to start giving away free alpha account to all new visitor ,but I think they need more then it ,to get profit from it.as comparison I think shareapic.net already do a great stuff,however ,with there “weak control over “plagiarized material.”I think they need to fix that out soon or will be drag down soon
So who’s going to pay? with an event album being shared by several people, who’s going to held accountable for the bandwidth and diskspace used for that particular album?
I saw early betas of Divvyshot and I was impressed when it was still starting. Great job!
I would imagine you pay for the photos you upload. Sharing access is simply the feature you are paying for.
Boy — yet another attempt at photo sharing. Applaud your effort but…
1) another place to register (and download a client) to share photos — don’t we have enough already?
3) which demographic is this targeting? the younger crowd (Sorority Girls) is on FB, the older is on one of the bigger four (Kodak, Snap, Shutter, Smug).
2) agree group photo sharing is not fully built out, but facebook groups does a decent job. No download needed. Oh, and Kodak, Shutterfly, and the others have decent group functionality. Not perfect but the gap isn’t big enough to get me to add photos to yet another shoebox.
3) high resolution downloads — again a nice feature but most people share low rez as a convenience to both sides (send/receiving) and if someone wants the full res, usually this is done via email. Not sure what the value is here. If there is pricing based on bandwidth, etc people will look for other solutions. Also, Google Photos/Picasaweb has full resolution downloads and doesn’t charge for this (unlike Kodak Gallery, and others).
4) again the private vs public sharing is seen as a plus but isn’t it a small niche? Sharing photos but don’t want to share with everyone, but want to share with a group vs. individuals. If you head towards privacy you reduce the appeal to mass market even if you target groups. Look at how Flickr took down Shutterfly, Kodak, Snapfish on pure # of photos shared.
5) highly relevant customized goods? Yes, it’s a big market (Shutterfly makes $150+ M revenue/year) but look at the demographic again. Sorority girls don’t spend money on photo customized products. If you are curious about the competition, hop on a flight to PMA in Las Vegas later this week : you will see hundreds of vendors selling customized photo gifts, but not for Sorority Girls (more like moms, grandparents, scrapbookers)
6) cost of acquisition — nothing inherently viral here, and lots of players are going after anyone who is willing to spend money on photo gifts. If you want to see how much they are willing to spend to get customers, check out commission junction for any of their offers, and that will be a good proxy for what marketing budgets they are leveraging.
Good luck.
This is pretty bad. I mean, you can find SO MANY services that do exactly the same thing.
Check out this photo sharing site http://www.imagevat.com
Did they cornify the first screen in that demo?
I’m really excited to see these guys release. I’ve been beta testing the application for the last week.
As an example of how Divvyshot’s different, check out a typical event: http://divvysho...com/event/wFmc/
Anyone can add & download photos to it. This isn’t something you can do on Facebook.
Divvyshot is a great service for a few reasons:
1. It allows you to share high res photos without downloading a client, sending an unreasonable number of emails with attachments, or resorting to other archaic methods like swapping jump drives.
2. You can invite other people to add photos to the same event which is awesome when you go on vacation/to a party/etc. and everyone is taking pictures with different cameras.
3. Facebook integration = one-stop posting.
4. It’s easy.
5. I never have to right click “save as” again if I want a friend’s picture off of Facebook.
I was going through the site. looks like its a place to create event photo together. There is a site http://www.meetupdiary.com – i am using meetupdiary since December 2008. I liked the way they covered both event + event photos/videos/blogs … its awesome.
Nice website, but you should also check out http://www.troovi.com . Next to a more convenient uploader (flash – no java required) it also got better features (rss, photo browsing without page reloads, twitter integration, etc.)
Think of the giant porn collection that’s bound to be shared…
Wow: really easy photo sharing! This is extraordinary! I can’t imagine why nobody thought of it before. It sure gives me confidence in Y-Combinator’s ability to pick companies that they picked this one in the middle of the worst recession in almost a century.
True, sharing photos in this way is absolutley amazing!!!
However, it’s not something new – see http://www.troovi.com . RRW tested Troovi weeks ago and basicthinking.de (Germany’s top tech-blog) already last year.
As Troovi arrived first and has better functionality I’ll continue to go for it. Thumbs up!
Photo sharing sites will continue to emerge as long as there are people taking photos…one site does not fit all. The challenge is how to differentiate from one another. Divvyshot succeeds for those who want dead simple sharing. Nice job.
Best of luck to them, but I think it’s going to be an uphill battle. Lots of competition in this arena.
Lol. In England, a “divvy” is a slang word for a moron. Score one for pointless web startups. When are you guys going to realise the world doesn’t care and you aren’t going to make any money doing this. Y-Comb. would be better off buying lottery scratch cards.
I am actually doing a photo sharing site which is gonna be easier than divvyshots.