Why doesn't there seem to be a "standard" way to share group photos?
I feel like this is a very common use case for myself, and I'm sure for others as well. You go on a beach trip with friends, or go to a music festival, or attend a wedding, etc. and at the end you end up saying "Hey can you send me all the photos you took". Which involves a decent amount of extra work especially if many people are involved and you may or may not be interested in all the photos.
I know there are a good amount of apps out there that have tried to tackle this, and theres some standard options like Google Photos, Dropbox, etc. that support this but aren't built for it, but it doesn't seem like there is a go-to app that everyone could say "Oh sure lets just create a Blah-Blah album to upload them to". Why is that? Is it just not a hot enough market? Or not a great solution out there? Or is it actually solved and I'm just unaware?
I think there's been hundreds of apps like this. They've all failed, and I think it's because they couldn't get around the network effect of chat apps.
Why would I switch if 8 or 10 of the friends in a group has FB messenger or Telegram? Downloading a new app, going through onboarding, that's all friction.
I think if you can find a way around this, it's a billion dollar market. But seems like a hard mote.
Latest app like this I used was "Wedshoots" this weekend. Group sharing app for photos at a wedding. It was ok, but clearly a low quality app. Not clear how they make money (probably charges the owner of the group)
I actually used to run an app similar to Wedshoots, as you mentioned the friction to onboarding people was the biggest barrier. But while running it I could see how powerful an application like that could be if done correctly. Not that I know how to do it correctly, it just suprises me that none of the big guys have done it. Like if Google built "Wedshoots" but for general photos I could definitely see myself and friends using that.
I think google had one of these at some point. 🤔 I think I remember it being a part of the Picasa ecosystem…
But yes. You’re right. It should practically be built into iOS / android at some point with access handed around through any medium via tokens, preferably to trusted accounts (so you can invite anyone, but you can always see who has access).
That onboarding would have to be beyond smooth though.
I guess you could give out access via link/token easily enough (share by qr code, short url, etc) but limit participation unless you hand over some account info (preferably via login with apple or equivalent).
It’s interesting.