Webshots takes on Photobucket

Webshots today announced a free image hosting service called AllYouCanUpload.com, here's the full story from Yahoo! (since CNET News had not yet covered their own announcement!)

As far as I can figure, this is a way for Webshots to boost their comScore Media Metrix numbers. In a recent WSJ article Photobucket showed one year growth of 81% while Webshots was down -16%. Even though I have yet to figure out the business model around Photobucket's giving away free disk storage and bandwidth as a remote hoster though with 10 million unique users a month you should be able to figure out some way to make a buck. That is certainly what Trinity Ventures was thinking when they recently recently invested $10.5 million in Photobucket.

Traffic numbers and ranking are vitally important to CNET as they have built a major online advertising property around Webshots.

-MJK

Presto - photo sharing for Boomers

My friend Sharon Chiarella, who was the first product manager for Kodak's online printing services, just sent me a note about the coming out of her new startup called Presto (I keep on wanting to put a Yahoo-like exclamation point after Presto!). They announced today $10 million in venture funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Clearstone Venture Partners. Their stealth name was Sonata Systems.

From what I can glean it is a printer built by HP that you give to your parents who are not proficient PC-users. You then upload your photos to Presto.com and they will deliver the image data to the printer using a phone line (they should also look at using a wide area wireless network). This is a smart move for HP to insert themselves (and their ink and paper) into a virtual sharing solution. For many Boomers, prints on the fridge beat pix on the PC.

I think this will be a hot item for this holiday season if it is priced right. My parents would love this. There's a magical moment when you receive a new picture and can hold it in your hands. I've tried the remote picture frames (like the short-lived Kodak Storybox and the Ceiva Digital Photo Receiver) and they were a lot of work and with only 20-30 picture capacity my parents always seemed to want to keep the exact pictures I deleted! It also seemed like the monthy fees were out of line. With Ceiva, the owner of the receiver pays $99/yr. If you gave one as a gift, your investment is $129 + $99/yr. Hopefully Presto can participate in the consumables revenue to keep the network fees low and encourage lots of sharing.

Presto will be showing it at the Wall Street Journal's D4: All Things Digital conference next week hosted by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher.

Good luck Sharon and the Presto team!

Stunning Nikon

Not only did Nikon announce a 20% increase on profits yesterday, they also sent out a very provocative email to their mailing list directing users to a new flash-based microsite Stunning Nikon that features model Kate Moss promoting the CoolPix S-6 Camera.

Looks like digital camera marketing is "heating up"!

Welcome Tabblo - Photosharing with Style

Congratulations to the team at Tabblo as today marks the release of their public Beta! I've known the founder, Antonio Rodriguez for several years and his passion for making a great and different photosharing service is infectious - give Tabblo a try, you'll see - once you start, it's hard to stop.

This initial release is just the beginning of a platform for personal expression with digital media that fills a gap between albums & slideshows and creating a full-blown web site. A Tabblo can be something you spend 10 minutes on after an event like this:

We had a great panel with Jon Finegold of uLocate/Where.com, Antonio Rodriguez of Tabblo, Evan Nisselson of Digital Railroad and Mike Feinstein of Venrock Associates.
... See my Tabblo>

Or something you start and come back to over time to add to and improve. Here's a Tabblo from a day visiting Indian ruins on our recent vacation to Arizona.

On Tuesday we set out to visit several Indian ruins close to Sedona, had lunch in the old mining town of Jerome and finished with a visit to the Tuzigoot National Monument.  A great day and we all learned a thing or two! ... See my Tabblo>

Give Tabblo a try and make sure to add me as a Friend (MyronK).