Open public albums are back!
By popular demand, we have put open public albums back into the Phanfare service in a release that went out today. This means that you can publish your albums for all to see at a URL that you can send via email or put on a web page.
We did this as a result of overwhelming feedback from our customers that they want to share without requiring people to register to view.
We are also enabling email invites to view that to go unregistered users. Collectively, these two changes will make the social networking features in Phanfare optional. Use them if you want them.
For those keeping track, we made a set of changes to Phanfare in December, collectively known as Phanfare 2.0, that traded the old website hosting model for one that layered social networking on top of Phanfare. We did this out of a belief that social networks, like facebook, are a fun and collaborative way to share photos and videos.
What our customers told us though was that they valued Phanfare because it was not a walled garden and that the strict social networking permission model was too constrained for them. We took a hard look at what makes the Phanfare service special and decided that being an open platform for storing your photos and videos in the cloud was our core. The social networking within Phanfare remains for those who want to use it. At the same time, we have enabled our customers to display their photos and videos on other social networks if they please.
To that end, we recently released the Phanfare facebook app that will allow you to pick and choose which albums you display to your Facebook friends.
Personally, I actually like the social networking features of Phanfare 2.0 and use them with close friends and family. But I also publish a subset of my albums from Phanfare to my facebook profile. And I enjoy my Phanfare photos on my living room TV via our media server that integrates with the Playstation III and Xbox 360. And I have my screensavers set to show content from friend and family albums.
Aside from open public albums, we also released another user-facing feature today: Editing of photos in Picnik.
We have always had fairly full featured editing in our downloadable applications, and now with the Picnik integration, you can edit photos on the web too. Tell us what you think of it.






Add New Comment
Viewing 52 Comments
Thanks. Your comment is awaiting approval by a moderator.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Add New Comment
Trackbacks
(Trackback URL)
October 16, 2008 at 10:48 am
[...] This is just too funny…Phanfare Blog: Andrew Erlichson » Open public albums are back! [...]
November 5, 2008 at 1:02 pm
[...] Scarlett Johansson Has A Cracking Set Of Bazzers - Survey | Hecklerspraytdaxp » Blog Archive » Inside the Black ...