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Report on Existing Image Sharing Websites
Introduction
Whether the VRA Image Sharing Project uses an existing web-based image sharing service, or designs an image sharing service of its own, the characteristics of successful existing web-based services can help shape the VRA’s project. This report will point out successful and unsuccessful characteristics that may help the VRA define its project.
Table of services and links to individual summaries
Copyright
Copyright explanations are handled in a variety of ways in these image sharing services. Wikimedia Commons has an excellent checklist to follow before uploading images; Flickr and 23 use Creative Commons licensing. Webshots handles copyright protection by allowing image downloads through a proprietary desktop software available only to members. Woophy has a copyright disclaimer that appears at the top of the window with the image viewed at its largest size.
Some sites geared towards a trendier audience (Image Vimage, PicOodle) are much less interested in copyright issues.
Descriptive Text/Cataloging
Cataloging images, or assigning descriptions, is not at all a priority of most of the existing image sharing websites. Most rely on simple captions and tagging to describe or define the images. Organizing levels (“albums” in Shutterfly or “collections” in Flickr) are used on a number of sites to arrange images in meaningful ways to members. Few sites allowed a large block of descriptive text (Flickr, Zoomr) to accompany the image, and, interestingly, most members of those sites don’t take advantage of this capability. The trend in internet searches seems decidedly biased towards keywords and tags as searching tools.
Image “metadata” (EXIF information from the camera and/or IPTC imbedded information) is shared with and available on most of these existing web services (though largely ignored as far as I could tell).
Design
A successful image sharing site for the VRA would share common goals with many of these existing image-sharing sites. Some of the commercial sites (Kodakgallery, Webshots) are very professional-looking and can appeal to a wide variety of users with differing skill levels, something that the VRA will want in its own image sharing project. Others are not so appealing, especially to an academic environment (Image Vimage, PicOodle).
Atpic is an interesting example of a developer-generated image sharing site. VRA should be cautious about using their target audience (user) to help define their image sharing project, rather than designing around what is cool or what is possible.
Downloading
Downloading derivative images in multiple sizes (Flickr) is a very handy feature. PowerPoint users, for example, will need only a presentation-sized image. Being able to download a thumbnail image may have its uses as well.
GIS/Geotagging
Panoramio handles geotagging best of the image sharing sites examined; images are placed on a map when they are uploaded. (Images are reviewed before they are included on Google Earth.) Flickr uses Yahoo maps, PlanetEye Microsoft Virtual Earth, and Woophy a map of its own design. Flickr and PlanetEye do not display GIS coordinates when the image is mapped. Woophy and Panoramio display GIS coordinates, but not in decimal form. (Google Earth does not recognize GIS coordinates except in decimal form, and the decimal format is recommended by W3C.)
http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/geo/Wiki/LatitudeLongitudeAltitude
Mapping images is an engaging way to interact with images; students and professors are using Geotagging techniques in the classroom and in research. Mapping historic sites, UNESCO sites, museums, natural features, and art images in general can be an interesting feature of a VRA project. Google Earth Communities and Google Earth Education Community (not officially affiliated with Google Earth) are worth watching for future VRA endeavors; neither is an image sharing service, but both have educational potential.
Help and Terms
Sites like Kodakgallery and Shutterfly maintain excellent help files and terms of service because of their commercial nature and their broad audience. In preparing this report I found that the FAQ pages of most commercial sites were also excellent sources of information, and that PhotoBucket’s site map was extremely helpful as well. Developing a comprehensive Terms of Service from the start of the project would be extremely beneficial to the VRA. The company TRUSTe (cited on Shutterfly) might be of interest for crafting policy statements:
http://www.truste.org/
Languages
European-based sites were much better with multi-lingual users (23, Zoomr), which is something the VRA should address in its project (Flickr is an exception, handling eight languages). Atpic had an interesting wiki solution to translation of languages.
Searching
Woophy allows users to assign a “category” to images as they are uploaded; this adds a helpful search layer. This might be a way to establish controlled vocabulary at a basic level in the VRA project -- perhaps through established media types or time periods? Woophy also allows you to browse its members by name, which might be helpful for a relatively small community of VRA collections.
TagCow also has a great concept: an additional tagging layer by a committee of taggers to achieve a richer search. Instead of cows, VRA could use image curators to add meaningful tagging (controlled vocabulary terms, consistency of spelling) to images.
Tagging images can be a very robust and nimble way to facilitate use of images.
Sites like Phanfare are of notice because they interact with other web-based information sharing sites like MySpace and FaceBook. There may be users of the VRA image sharing project who want features like that, especially as social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us become more prevalent and professors become more digitally engaged.
Storing/archiving
While a number of image sharing services warned users to back up their data and not depend on the service for image storage, a few promised to securely protect members’ images. SmugMug, for example, saves its members’ data in three different locations. TagCow’s owner Munio advertises “Memory Insurance” for your digital files. The VRA should consider what image storing, protection (back-ups), and archiving policies will be if it designs an image sharing service.
Uploading
Most services allow basic one-at-a-time uploading and batch uploading only with the installation of a Flash (23) or a Java (Phanfare) or other (Kodakgallery) application. The uploading tools for a VRA image sharing project should not be too invasive to a member’s computer since most institutional harddrives use firewalls and other security devices to prevent downloading. At the same time, uploading images can be slow and the process should be streamlined to avoid frustration.
Notes
PlanetEye uses local experts to shape the focus of its travel site. This adds a layer of trust to its information. VRA could use a system like this to monitor the shared images, with curators with expertise in a particular area or culture vetting the uploaded images.
Many of these image sharing service sites have ads on them, especially at the “free” member level. Most ads are very unobtrusive (no pop-ups) and content-specific. How would a VRA image sharing site benefit from ads? Would Scholars Resource, or Archivision, or Light Impressions be willing to sponsor a VRA image-sharing site with small ads? A few sites SmugMug, Snapfish) have purchasing options for members wishing to sell their images. Would allowing commercial vendors to contribute images to a VRA sharing project be feasible?
Conclusion
Existing image sharing sites could be used with some success by the VRA in an image sharing project with some compromise of VRA standards of core-level cataloging. A closed community (not public, but a moderated subgroup of a larger membership) would be prudent, since cavalier attitudes towards copyright and image use are the norm in the internet environment.
If the VRA chose to design its own image sharing website, an examination of existing services would be helpful in defining the characteristics of the VRA project.
Such a project would be long-term, however, and using an existing image sharing site as a test for VRA members would be a good idea. This would allow VRA to move forward with new technologies relatively quickly. It could be an experiment that would familiarize VRA members with web-based image sharing, and help the VRA define which features would be helpful (and which would not!) in developing its own image sharing service.
Flickr seems to have the most suitable platform for VRA to experiment on the web with. A VRA image sharing group was started in April on Flickr; the group can be monitored for success (or frustration) as a case study in image sharing.
Table of services and links to individual summaries
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