Our users have discovered many more uses for Picurio than we originally imagined. One case we've seen over and over is a medium to large group collecting photos for a particular event. Examples of this case have included the Stanford 2009 Senior Formal and college dorm end-of-year yearbooks.

When users approach us about this case, they talk about how they had been considering creating a single Flickr or Picasa account and then sharing a password among a group of people. This is far from ideal as it really abuses the notion of an "account." If one person changes the password, it blocks access for others and it also imposes remembering extra information for everyone involved.

Most recently Picurio is being used to collect photos for the upcoming Stanford Homecoming in late October. As part of the festivities, the class of 2004 wanted to produce a slideshow so they came to Picurio as the central depot to collect photos for the event.

We're pleased to offer this service and hope Picurio might be helpful for your own event too.

We just launched something new here at Picurio that we're really excited about.  For the first time, we're enabling the browser to talk directly to the camera.  No one else does this.  Just plug a camera or camera phone into your computer and the photos appear immediately in the browser.

It works by using a Mac/Safari plugin that installs in seconds and doesn't require a browser restart.  It makes uploading a cinch.  Why don't all photo sites do this?  We have no idea.

It's available for download now for Safari users in all Picurio rooms. 

Try it out now in the Picurio Demo Room.

At Picurio we refer to this problem as Import Fear.  The thought of uploading photos (camera to computer to Flickr, Facebook, blog, and grandparents) can be an overwhelming task, and it makes us procrastinate on importing our photos for weeks or months.  We dread uploading, sorting, ranking, and tagging like we dread Monday mornings.  But shouldn't this be fun?

Our ability to wait for photos must stem from the Kodak processing days when we dropped off rolls of film at the drugstore and picked them up five days later, but these days we want things fast, now, in real-time.  We want to have that photo waiting for us by the time we get home, or better yet in our pocket just moments after it was taken.  Wi-fi or Eye-fi enabled cameras and camera phones are a step in the right direction, as is Posterous's new PicPosterous app, but the pieces aren't all fitting together just yet.

How should import fear be eliminated?

Brand new on Picurio: tweet your photos!  Click the twitter button in slideshow mode to post your photo on twitter.  Friends who click the link to your photo get to see the large version in slideshow view, can download the original, and can re-tweet the link.  It's a simple way to share photos with twitter friends and followers.

Happy tweeting!

The hardworking guys at 280 North recently released a new version of their framework, and we've integrated several of their new features into Picurio.  Be on the lookout for better text boxes, buttons, and more!

Back in May we conducted a stream of interviews with current Stanford students about how they share photos.  They all had two things in common.  1) They use Facebook.  2) Their parents had tried unsuccessfully to add them as friends.

No factor bothered them more than allowing their parents to see all their college photos - dorm events, parties, and the like.  In their parents eyes it was a hip way to keep in touch with a child living far from home.  In the students' eyes it was a voyeur's request for too much information.

All the students handled the situation differently.  One accepted the friend request, got scolded for some photos posted by a dorm mate, and promptly de-friended.  Another refused the request, and instead gets photos from his father via MMS in his efforts to stay in touch.  None of them had attempted to navigate the elusive Facebook privacy settings to solve the problem.

Facebook was not designed to be a photo sharing app, nor was it built around permissions controls.  In the beginning, only college students at elite universities were allowed on the site - the air of exclusivity that undoubtedly made it popular in the first place.  They could post anything and everything, knowing it would be seen only by peers.  The site opened up to more universities, then high schools, and now parents and grandparents.  A recent article in the Stanford magazine encouraged parents to use social networking tools as an "opportunity to connect with their children".  I question how many were successful.

We at Picurio hope to solve this problem.  The site is built around photos and photo permissions.  Rooms make it easy to see who can see which photos, and a dead-simple drag-and-drop can be used to move photos between them.  When a friend shares photos from an event in one room, all it takes is a single drag-and-drop to get the mom-friendly photos into the family room and vice versa.  It's easy to share not only photos you took, but photos anyone took of you.  And you can do it in a one-off fashion without hassle.  The photo permissions problem, solved.

When asked if he'd pay $5 a month to see photos of me, my father replied "$5? I'd pay $500!".  Needless to say, my Picurio-enabled father is a happy camper.  And he's sticking to his own friends on Facebook.

--Laura

We've taken down our beta logo and are formally launching Picurio!
 
The new site is centered around rooms, where you can share and organize your group's photos all in one place. We've created two types of rooms to choose from: paid and free.
 
We wanted our paid room pricing to match the concept of a room, as well as our personal spending styles. We find ourselves happy to spend a few dollars at a time at the iTunes store, or for a cup of frozen yogurt, and imagine other people feel the same way. On top of that, since rooms are frequently used for photosharing after specific events, we wouldn't want you to have to pay for a year subscription when you only need it for a month or two. Picurio pricing lets you pay-as-you-go, so you only spend a few dollars each month, and don't end up paying for time you don't use.
 
It's important to us that there's a way for everyone to use Picurio for free, so we also have an invite plan. Bringing new friends to join Picurio keeps a room open, completely free. We don't see this being too hard a task, since we think you'll want to get all your friends photos already! And free rooms can be converted to paid rooms at any point, and by any member of the room. So if you start out with a free room for your family, then anyone (like Mom) can shell out the few dollars to convert it to a paid room.
 
We're excited about our new offerings and look forward to hearing what you think!
 
The Picurio Team

We'd like to take this chance to say "thanks" to the users who have been helping beta test Picurio. There were a number of surprises that came from testing our product. We also got feedback on which features need to be prioritized. Some things we learned:

• Personal libraries aren't used as much as rooms. When we designed the product, we thought both would receive equal usage. We imagined that people would choose to share a subset of their photos in a room where other could see. Instead, room usage towered over that of the personal library. As a result, we've streamlined the creation of rooms and made it a more prominent part of Picurio.
• Most requested feature: captions. Most broadly, people want to attach text to their photos. Beta testers, we've heard you!
• You really like our thumbnail viewing experience. We've heard repeatedly that you're sick of sites that make you click "next page" multiple times to see a whole album. On Picurio, we're smart about how we load thumbnails so you can see many more on a page compared to other sites. Ajax tricks also let you browse many albums quickly without page reloads so it has a snappy feel.