Instagram is an online mobile photo-sharing, video-sharing and social networking service that allows its users to take pictures and videos and share them either publicly or privately on the app as well as other social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr. As we know that these sites follow asynchronous communication methods to engage the audience.
A new version 7.5 was released in August 2015 to allow users to post photos captured in any aspect ratio. The users can also apply digital filters to their images and the maximum duration for the videos is 15 seconds.
Imgur is an online image sharing community and image host founded by Alan Schaaf. Albums were introduced to the platform on October 11, 2010. The album layouts are customizable and embeddable.
The public Imgur gallery is a collection of the most viral images from around the web. The images added to the gallery are publically searchable by title and the members of the Imgur community can vote or comment on the images, earning reputation points and trophies.
Flickr is an image and video hosting website and web services suite created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo in 2005.
Besides being a popular site for sharing and embedding personal photographs and an online community, the service is also widely used by photo researchers and bloggers to host images that they embed in blogs and social media platforms.
Photobucket is an image and video hosting website, web services suite and online community for sharing the entire photo and video lifecycle.
It is widely used for both personal and business purposes and links from personal Photobucket accounts are often used for avatars displayed on Internet forums, storage of videos, embedding on blogs and distribution in social networks. Images hosted on Photobucket are frequently linked to online businesses, online auctions and classified advertisement websites like eBay and Craiglist.
DeviantArt is an online community that was launched on August 7, 2000 by Angelo Sotira, Scott Jarkoff, Matthew Stephens and others.
The DeviantArt artworks are organized in a comprehensive category structure including photography, digital art, traditional art, literature, Flash, filmmaking, skins for applications, operating system customization utilities and others along with extensive downloadable resources like tutorials and stock photography. The additional features of the platform include journals, polls, groups and portfolios.
Shutterfly is an Internet-based image publishing service. The flagship product of the company is its photo book line. Its company Tiny Prints has launched “Tiny Prints for iPad” in September 2014, a mobile version of their online stationery boutique the company acquired in 2011.
Shutterfly allows its users to create personalized photo gifts including photos and texts such as Samsung Galaxy and iPhone cases, photo books, wall art and home décor.
TinyPic is a photo and video sharing service, owned and operated by Photobucket.com that allows users to upload, link and share images and videos on the Internet. The idea of the platform is similar to URL shortening in which each uploaded image is given a relatively short internet address. No account is required to access Tinypic.
TinyPic allows users to upload and host jpg, png, gif and tiff files. Images larger than 16,000 pixels are automatically resized to the largest acceptable size while maintaining their original aspect ratio. The site requires a Captcha to be filled each time an image is uploaded.
It does not accept standard definition videos larger than 500 megabytes or longer than 15 minutes. It only accepts video formats such as 3g2, 3gp, 3gp2, 3gpp, 3p, asf, avi, divx, dv, dvx, flv, moov, mov, mp4, mpe, mpeg4, mpeg, mpg4, mpg, qt, rm, wmv and xvid.
We Heart It is an image based social network for inspiring images that allows users to collect their favourite images to share with friends and organize collections as well as access the site through a web browser or the platform’s own iOS and Android Apps.
ImageShack is a subscription-based image hosting website launched in 2003. It made an announcement in January, 2014 that it was switching to a subscription based service and would no longer offer free uploads. However, images stored in free accounts will be available until January 31, 2016. Free accounts not converted to paid accounts will be deleted after that date.
The new website interface does not allow direct free web-based access to the original image resolution but mages can be downloaded in bulk at original resolution using their SkyPath application.
ImageVenue is a free image hosting site for bloggers, message board users and eBay sellers.
ImageBam is a free image hosting, galleries and photo sharing site for social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs, forums, eBay, Craiglist and more.
ImageBam offers photo editor tools and lets you organize you images and galleries as well as add a title and description to your galleries. It allows unlimited uploads and downloads of files but the file size is restricted to 10 MB.
SmugMug is a paid photo-sharing website and image hosting service launched in 2002 that allows users to upload both HD photos and videos to their SmugMug sites.
It offers four different account levels each with a different subset of features as well as a toolset to facilitate the selling of digital and print media for amateur and professional photographers.
Picasa is an image organizer and image viewer for organizing and editing digital photos as well as an integrated photo-sharing website originally created by a company named Lifescape in 2002.
Google acquired Picasa in 2004 and began offering it as freeware. The latest version Picasa 3.9 was launched in January, 2015 that supports Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 and has Google+ integration for users of that service.
Snapfish is a web-based photo sharing and photo printing service owned by District Photo that allows users to upload files for free. It gives the members an unlimited storage space.
Snapfish members can share photo albums, individual photos, animated Snapshows, Group rooms or Snapfish products via email, link URL and other social media such as Facebook, Blogger and MySpace. A Snapfish account is required to view shared photos.
TwitPic is a website and app launched in 2008 that allows users to post pictures to the Twitter microblogging service. It is often used by citizen journalists to upload and distribute pictures in real-time as an event is taking place.
Pixpa enables photographers, artists, and designers to easily create pixel-perfect portfolio websites. Creative professionals can also sell their images as prints or digital downloads. Setting up e-commerce based image galleries is easy on Pixpa. You can create price sheets and offer your clients multiple print options along with digital downloads.
