If you need a place to host your digital work or photos online, then there is a wide range of sites you can use – some with better features than others, here we list and mini-review 31 of the best and worst…
Zoomr : Recent startup that is shaping up to take on Flickr. Have just announced they will be increasing monthly limits on free and paid accounts to more than what Flickr offers.Vmix : Founded by the people behind MP3.com, Vmix offers photo and video sharing along with the ability to create you own slideshows. A busy-looking site that seems to have quite a bit of traffic.
Flickr : The daddy of photo-sharing sites, the first in the breed of web 2.0 photo sites, allows you to create galleries, tag photos etc. The biggest in terms of traffic and was acquired by Yahoo.
Fotki : Founded in 1998 Fotki has been around for ages in relation to a lot on this list, it offers a range of services such as photo-sharing, photo-printing, photo-selling and blogging.
Fotolog : Large photo blogging community – claims to have a staggering 1.5 billion page views and receive over 20 million unique visitors per month which is backed up by its alexa ranking of 33.
Fototopic : Another site that has been around a few years; since 1999. Offers gallery services and also prints and your photos on to various gifts within their store.
Glowfoto : A basic photo sharing site that offers galleries and the option to upload via mobile phone. 25million photos have been uploaded by 73k users so far.
MyPhotoAlbum : Photo sharing with the usual features and also offers printing; currently offering 15 free prints to new users. Has had 32million photos uploaded so far.
Panoramio : Photo storage and a mapping feature via a mashup with google maps. Each photo gets linked with the place it was taken. 2GB storage included for free.
Ringo : No, not the beatle but a rather smart-looking site which combines photo sharing with social networking. Every week you get your friends newest photos and comments delivered to you. One of the better-looking sites.
Zoomonga : A nice-looking site but the rather stingy 20mb of uploads per month on the free plan could be why it doesnt look exactly busy.
Webshots : Another huge site owned by Cnet. Provides the usual photo sharing features plus a desktop utility for organising photos, prints on gifts etc.
Photobucket : The favourite of myspace users, provides free and paid accounts for image hosting and video hosting along with the ability to create a flash slideshow. Have harnessed viral marketing to a tee and provide most of the image hosting for myspace and other social networks.
PBase : Not the easiest on the eye but seems to have gained huge traffic since it was established in 1999. Very basic features and a huge member’s forum.
Phanfare : Offers unlimited storage for a monthly fee of $6.95 to host your photos and video clips. Also provides downloadable organisation software.
SmugMug : Really nicely designed site that offers accounts from $59.95 per year with a free trial. The user galleries are nice to look at and you can include video in these.
Dropshots : Front end looks nice and clean and the features are up to scratch but viewing the sample gallery lets the site down – cluttered and ugly.
Slide : Another site that has taken advantage of myspace to create viral marketing. Users upload photos and create slideshows using the editor and then post them to their profile or blog etc. Controls are nice and easy to use, will do well unless myspace bring out their own slideshow tools.
Photosite : Provides photo sharing but you get the impression the site is more about selling prints and gifts than that. looks a touch too corporate although the drag and drop tools sound impressive.
23HQ : Nice site which provides completely free accounts, basic features such as galleries, tagging and photogroups; where you can form your own community of friends and chat and share each other’s photos.
Kodak Gallery : Goes under the name of a photo sharing site but looks very corporate and set up to flog merchandise rather than provide a nice website experience.
Zoto : Nice site with good features such as geo-tagging, photo blogging and the usual community features such as browsing by interest. Free version with the option to upgrade to a pro account for $24.95 per year.
Snapfish : Another corporate site run by Hewlett Packard, offers photo sharing and digital prints of your snaps.
Flukiest : Photo, Video and music sharing with the ability to upload via mobile phone or a personalised Flukiest email address.
Imagestation : Sonys photo sharing offering, much better looking the Kodaks or HPs. Usual features with printing options but also the ability to upload via your psp.
PictureTrail : Another site that is combining photo sharing and social networking. Provides myspace style customisable profiles and some nice flash widgets to create 3d cubes of your photos, heart shapes, slideshows, screensavers and loads more bits and bobs.
Hello : Great domain and Googles offering which is designed to work in tandem with their picasa image organising software which they acquired. Picasa is great piece of software and helps you find pictures you had long forgotten about. it seems that hello allows you to send images to your friends like and instant messager or to your blogger blog.
Parazz : Parazz is a nifty looking site which offers drag and drop uploading, slideshow creation with the option to add a soundtrack, camera phone uploads and a colour theme editor. They provide a free version or pro version for $29 a year.
Zeec : Clean looking site with nice user galleries, offers the choice of uploading via your pc or mac with their software or via mobile phone.
Funtigo : A site offering photo scrapbooks, users can deesign each album or Web page the way you they like by adding text, backgrounds, clipart and animated text to their pages. Nice features and as myspace found out, people like to customise their pages.
