One of the most effective categories of the new Web 2.0 for the entire hospitality industry is Photo Sharing. Photo sharing is a term given to a category of website that provides means to publish a collection of digital photos online. These sites allow users to organize and share photos, often in a “photoblog” format, with journal entries for each photo.

Good photo sharing sites generally allow users to categorize and organize images, provide keyword tags, deliver images in multiple sizes, do basic image manipulation, and share images on their websites or blogs.

Why should you consider photo sharing?

• Millions use photo-sharing sites. Search to see if there are already photos of your area, lodging property, or travel destination, and see what people are posting about it.
• Photo sharing sites will link to your hospitality industry website with the photos you upload. This will help drive qualified traffic (if your photos are good), as well as provide potential search engine benefits.
• Photo sharing sites are a convenient place to share photos, and they let you create slideshows to put on your lodging website.
• Photo sharing sites are a powerful and convenient way to manage your own photo library; photos can even be made private if you don’t want the whole world to see them. You can also set up multiple users to allow collaboration.
• Most photo sharing sites will print all kinds of collateral (calendars, booklets, posters, prints, stamps, etc) items from your photos. Take advantage of this to help strengthen your hotel or hospitality name recognition.
• Most photo sharing sites will let you create a “community”, thereby offering great photo sharing and online marketing opportunities for Chamber of Commerce’s, CVBs and tourist associations.
• Most photo sharing sites offer easy and intuitive photo-editing of photos. This is a good place for people who don’t pre-edit their photos on their computers to tweak them after they upload them.
• How big is the photo sharing market? Depending upon which source you trust, there appear to be about 50 million US visitors to the top 10 players each month. Here are figures from a few sources:

Taken from

PhotoBucket Leads Photo Sharing Sites; Flickr at #6
(Read this article, and the ones below, to find out more about the traffic debate)
Nielsen/NetRatings just announced US numbers for April in thousands of unique users:
- Photobucket: 7,838 (vs 5,419 a year ago, for 45% growth)
- Y! Photos: 7,772 (vs 6,439 a year ago, for 21% growth)
- Kodak: 7,633 (vs 6,508 a year ago, for 17% growth)
- Webshots: 6,070 (vs 6,070 a year ago)
- Flickr: 4,816 (vs 1,080 a year ago, for 346% growth)

Meanwhile, Comscore’s US numbers for May have been out for a while. For the sites mentioned by Hitwise (Hitwise didn’t include AOL Pictures, but if they had, they’d be in the middle of the pack on these two lists):
- Y! Photos: 11,328 (vs 9,778 a year ago, for 16% growth)
- Photobucket: 10,292 (vs 3,224 a year ago, for 217% growth)
- Webshots: 8,478 (vs11,082 a year ago, for -23.5% growth)
- Kodak: 7,431 (vs 5,625 a year ago, for 32.1% growth)
- Flickr: 5,163 (vs 923 a year ago, for 459% growth)
- Imageshack: 5,006 (vs 3,593 a year ago, for 39% growth)
- SnapFish: 4,755 (N/A)
- Shutterfly: 4,126 (vs 2,732 a year ago, for 51% growth)
- Picturetrail: 1,286 (vs 2,020 a year ago, for -36% growth)
- Slide: 1,072 (N/A)

Taken from Paul Kedrosky’s Infectious Greed: Shaking Out Photo-Sharing

Additional Resources:

Photobucket vs Flickr in Alexa and Technorati
10 Tips for More Blog Traffic recommends Flickr as a resource to increase Blog Traffic
Need More Traffic? Try Image Search Optimization

Digg vs YouTube - An article comparing the traffic of Digg, YouTube, Wikipedia and Flickr… each is a leader in their web 2.0 category.
Flickr Powers World Cup Photos is an example of how major world events (9-11, Gulf War, World Cup, etc) are chronicled by users of Flickr.
Social Networking Booming Worldwide, comScore Says
PhotoBucket Bigger than Flickr? A good discussion on measuring the size of those two websites.
Flickr Not Even on the Medal Podium? so says LeAnn Prescott - A good article discussing the size of those two websites.
Trent Blizzard - Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc.
UPCOMING POSTS ON THIS TOPIC:

Part II of this series will focus on providing tips for signing up and using Flickr.
Part III of this series will focus on reviewing other players in the Photo Sharing market.
If you use Flickr and want to share your experiences, or, just have an opinion, please comment below.

 Email This Post  Print This Post

Categories: SEO, Web 2.0, Featured Articles.
Comments RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a comment, or trackback.