The market leading Yahoo! Photos is launching the new version of its site today, we had screen shots in a February post. The beta version of the site came online in June. The new version of the site includes tagging of photos, smart folders, ajax drag and drop photo organizing, single click tag editing and a simple photo editor. Storage space in Yahoo! Photos is free, though early users of the new system are reporting that there is still a 300 image limit to albums and a 5MB limit to individual photo size. The new site will be limited to US users for now but will roll out to users around the rest of the world in coming months, according to InfoWorld’s coverage.

Yahoo! Photos is reported to have 30 million users, while Webshots and Photobucket have 19 million users and Flickr approximately 2.5 million.

Accounts at Yahoo! Photos are free and will be monetized by advertisements and printing options. We reported in February that users will be able to pick up prints at Target stores, as Flickr users can, and presumably by postal mail as well. Mobile use of the system will also be featured in a partnership with AT&T.

Today may also be the day that Yahoo! Photos unveils its long awaited API. The company has said for months that it was on its way. The huge user base of Yahoo! Photos could make it a particularly appealing target for outside developers, though the fact that the user base is largely made up of non-early adopters could mitigate that excitement.

It will be interesting to see what the reaction to features like tagging and ajax is by the huge base of non-early adopters Yahoo! Photos. The company has said that some integration of Yahoo! Photos with Flickr will be forthcoming but that the sites will not be merged together due to the different types of users for each.

The much anticipated new Yahoo Photos Beta will launch on Thursday morning, around 9 am PST.

Sign in with your Yahoo ID at photos.yahoo.com. If you see a “try the new beta” image/link in the top right, it’s live. Click on the link to request an invitation – Yahoo plans on letting 10,000 or so people in over the next week and will ramp up from there.

I saw a demo of the new Yahoo Photos product at DEMO earlier this year (see screen shots here – more below), and again tonight at a launch event. Team members Darryl Eaton, Will Aldrich, Scott Schiller, Tim Anderson and Patrick Jean were there, as well as Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield and others (picture of all except Tim is here).

The new functionality brings in the best of Flickr (lots of Ajax, features like tagging and sets, and the ability to drag and drop photos) as well as new stuff that Flickr doesn’t have. Unlimited free uploading and bandwidth, full quality uploading (and downloading), and point and click tag editing. Two additional features – lots of pictures shown on a single page (see screen shots), and something called “smart albums”. Smart albums allow dynamic creation of albums based on rules (ratings, tags, date, etc.), and also allow inclusion of photos from friends. With smart albums, users can create albums like “highly rated” or “new” that will always be created on the fly.

I spoke to the team about when video will be uploadable along with photos. No on or off the record statements or hints were given, but something tells me they may be working on this.

Yahoo Photos is the largest online photo site with nearly 31 million unique monthly visitors (compare to Flickr’s 16.5 million). Flickr is for the early adopters. Yahoo photos used to be for the masses, but a few early adopters may be giving it a try, too.

It isn’t entirely fair to compare the new Yahoo Photos with all of the early stage companies showing their stuff at Demo. But its a very impressive product and it’s good that they came here to demo it. The new Yahoo Photos will be launching this spring.

Everyone knows that Yahoo owns Flickr, the wildly popular photo tagging and sharing service that they bought in late 2004. But what most people don’t know (I didn’t) is that around 30 million unique monthly visitors come to Yahoo Photos (the other Yahoo photo service) v. about 8 million on Flickr. Flickr has mind share; Yahoo Photos is driving real (unique) traffic.

An all new Yahoo Photos is being released in March. It combines many of the most-loved features of Flickr (like tagging and sets) with some entirely new stuff that is pretty compelling. Exclusive screen shots of the new service are below.

Yahoo Photos will be entirely free, and will allow uploading and archiving of an unlimited number of original high resolution pictures. Revenue will be generated from advertising on the site, along with premium printing and other services (books, calendars, prints, etc.). Like Flickr, Yahoo will also be allowing users to pick up prints at their local Target store.

Features

Yahoo Photos will integrate popular Flickr features, like tagging and sets, as well as popular printing options mentioned above. The screen shots below show some of these features.

They are also doing new stuff. They have two types of “sets”, or albums. The standard sets work very much like Flickr. But “Smart albums” allow dynamic creation of albums based on rules (ratings, tags, date, etc.), and also allow inclusion of photos from friends. With smart albums, users can create albums like “highly rated” or “new” that will always be created on the fly.

The all photos view is much better than Flickr. Many more photos can be viewed at once, and an Ajax interface allows for mass dragging and dropping into a tray at the top of the screen for inclusion in albums, sharing (via email and instant messaging), etc.

They have not integrated RSS feeds for photos and albums yet, but this is coming.

The Yahoo photos team includes Darryl Eaton, Will Aldrich, and Scott Schiller, who were all here at Demo this week.

Screen shots: