Sharing Photos with Family and Friends

Ever since the dot-com heydays, there have been a plethoria of companies founded to help us share our digital (or digitized) photos with our friends and family. Depending on each service's business motive, the features and annoyance factor varies. I'm going to provide a quick canvas of the tools I'm familiar with and will provide more detailed analysis of the ones I really like in a separate blog.

Photo Sharing Services

Service	Description	Target Audience	Revenue Model
Flickr	A web-based photo sharing service built with collaboration in mind. Beyond just viewing pictures, Flickr encourages its community members to "label" parts of a picture (e.g. "uncle joe") using their novel Flash-based client.	With a "zero-install" client and intuitive user interface, Flickr is targeted towards non-techie users who have the time and interest to organize, label and engage others with their picture collection.	Flickr offers a free basic service and a premium service for high-volume users. It's most likely going to add contextual ads based on it's richly labeled photos in the near future.
Gallery	A server-side application built with PHP. It has a strong role-based permission system and allows viewers to add comments to individual images. There's even a neat utility that integrates iPhoto with Gallery aptly named iGallery.	The installation of this software requires an intermediate level systems administrator. You'll also need access to your own publicly accessible web server running PHP.	Gallery is free (open source) software.
iPhoto + mac.com	iPhoto is Apple's OS X photo organizing software. It connects seamlessly to mac.com, Apple's web service, which includes image hosting.	iPhoto is a simple to use software, which makes it suitable for casual users. Unfortuanately, it's only available for the Mac. For advanced users, iPhoto doesn't process large image files very gracefully.	iPhoto comes free with your Mac. A mac.com subscription is $100/yr. There are no other commerical motives.
Mirra	Mirra sells a computing appliance that you install in your home to backup and share your digital content. Once the files are "mirra'd", you can easily create a web-based photo album. Mirra provides a directory service where friends and family can locate your Mirra server even if it's connected to a transient broadband connection.	If you don't mind spending $400-$600 and have a broadband connection at home, this solution is both easy to use and powerful. It does require that you install an application on each home computer in order to "mirra" your files.	You pay a one-time fee for the hardware and then the basic web service is free. I'm sure they're cooking up ways to upsell you additional services though.
Ofoto	An online photo printing business, which is owned by Kodak and marketed by Amazon.com. You upload your images via a web browser or a small downloadable application. You create galleries to share with friends but only at low-resolution.	If you still like to collect and receive prints, Ofoto is a reasonable service. However if you want to share/distribute original quality digital images, this is not the service for you.	Simply put, they help you "share" your pictures in hope that your friends will purchase prints. If you don't purchase from them after a couple of years, they'll threaten to delete your photos from their system.
PBase	Essentially a hosted version of Gallery where you create albums and share them with the rest of the world (read: no private galleries). They have a global user base and are especially popular amongst digital camera enthusiasts.	PBase is intended for intermediate and advanced users who want to share original resolutions images. If you are concerned about digital copyrights of your images, be sure to downsize your images before uploading them to PBase.	PBase is free for 30 days and then is reasonably priced at $23/yr per 200MB. They even have a feature where random visitors can purchase professional quality prints of your images. There is no advertising component to PBase's business.
Photo.net	More than just a photo sharing site, Photo.net is the original online photo community founded in 1995! There are lots of great tutorials and forums for you to sharpen up your skills and give a helping hand to beginners.	This site is geared towards photo hobbyists. The shared files are typically reduced in size to save storage space and prevent IP theft.	Photo.net is largely a free service funded by "patrons" who donate $30/yr, unobstrusive advertising, and affilate revenue from camera retailers.
Google/Picasa	Recently acquired by Google, it's not clear what Picasa will become. Currently, it's just a mediocre version of iPhoto, which allows you to organize your photos.	For Windows users who need a bit more functionality than Windows Explorer to organize their photos, Picasa is a good start. Knowing Google, web connectivity is forthcoming.	It's free for now, but I'm sure Google is plotting how to monetize photo sharing.
Shutterfly	The original online photo printing service, Shutterfly's service has been aped by Ofoto. They claim better digitally enhanced prints, but it's hard to tell the difference these days.	If you like to share printed photos, Shutterfly is a top-rated service for that. They only offer low-resolution thumbnails for sharing, so their sharing feature won't satisfy the power user.	They make money when you order prints, mugs, albums and calendars. In contrast to Ofoto, they will keep your photo collection online indefinitely.
Webshots	Recently purchased by CNET, Webshots claims to be the most popular photo sharing website. You have to download a client software, which in turn connects to their web hosting service. BEWARE though, their software essentailly takes control of your desktop.	Though geared towards a casual user, I found the Webshots user interface un-intuitive. Webshots upload service also aggressively (over) compresses all the images, which will not satisfy the high-end user.	They're trying to figure out a hundred ways to make money. Banner ads, pop-ups, spam, resetting the homepage on your browser--you name it, they'll try it. I'm going to uninstall this software after this review.