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Photobucket enables embedding of digital media search

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photobucket.jpgPhotobucket today announced the launch of the Photobucket Media Plug-in 2.0, an enhanced version of its free image and video hosting plug-in, originally launched in June 2006. It allows users of participating Web sites to search for billions of publicly stored photos, videos and images from Photobucket’s extensive library, and access their existing Photobucket media accounts – all without leaving partner sites. Since its launch in June 2006, the Photobucket Media Plug-in has been successfully deployed by hundreds of web sites. The Photobucket Media Plug-in 2.0 will be available for partner Web sites before the end of June 2007.

“Photobucket revolutionized digital media sharing by enabling content to be linked to third party sites,” said Alex Welch, CEO of Photobucket. “Adding search to Photobucket’s Media Plug-in’s instant image and video uploading features brings an extremely compelling service option for our partners. We’ve seen a tremendous surge in photo, image and video search, with users consistently coming back to look for the latest user-generated content to share with the world. Now, our partners can receive free digital media hosting and search, vastly improving their user experience and engagement.”

Current leading Photobucket Media Plug-in partner sites include: CherryTAP, Freewebs, Gaia Online, LiveJournal, Piczo, RockYou, Slide, Tagged, among others.

Bringing neighbors together with NeighborhoodCrossing.com

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neighborhoodcrossing.jpgSway, Inc. today launched its new online community, Neighborhood Crossing, a free online social community specifically for neighborhoods.

Neighborhood Crossing provides a safe online community allowing people to do everything from starting a playgroup or scheduling a barbecue to developing neighborhood crime watch groups. The site also allows users to create their own blogs, upload photos, post classified ads, list items available for sharing and participate in online discussion forms. Knowing your neighbors can help prevent crime.

“It’s difficult to communicate effectively without a tool like Neighborhood Crossing,” said Julie Blatt, who served as homeowner’s association president for her Oklahoma-neighborhood last year. “Over many months we developed our own web site to share a community calendar and post important information. If Neighborhood Crossing had existed last year we could have saved ourselves a lot of time, money and headaches.”

“Although people live close to each other, in such a tech-driven world it’s becoming more and more difficult to connect in person. Neighborhood Crossing allows neighbors to meet and interact online while working in tandem with relationships that they then carry offline,” said Sway CEO and Chief Marketing Strategist Jason Weaver.

Social shopping meets digital photography with Photo.com

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photocom.jpgPhoto.com announced that it will open its virtual doors on August 15th, 2007. A next generation social network, Photo.com plans on playing a critical role in the growth of the multi-billion dollar a year digital photography industry by offering the Internet’s most comprehensive set of photography and networking tools available in one place.

Justin Jarvinen, Photo.com’s founder, is confident that Photo.com will set a new standard for online shopping and networking.

“We envisioned the ultimate consumer experience and it was one where consumers felt empowered but not overwhelmed; it was simple but elegant; and it had everything a consumer wanted, from user-generated product reviews to advanced photo enhancing tools, an easy to use e-commerce platform, fun ways to share pictures, and more,” Justin Jarvinen, Photo.com founder, said.

As of today, nearly 600,000 visitors have logged on to Photo.com, many of whom registered for the chance to win a free digital camera. This success is despite zero advertising or public relations efforts. After August 15, Photo.com expects to be one of the top visited websites on the Internet and promises an unforgettable launch.

Editor’s note: We will see how unforgettable this launch would be.

Flickr goes multilingual

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flickr.jpgFlickr is now multi-lingual with the launching of its product in seven languages. Along with English, Flickr web sites now will be available in French, German, Korean, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and traditional Chinese.

“This is something we wanted to do a long time ago. It is also one of our most requested features. Tech enthusiasts in Buenos Aires, Paris – all over the world – use Flickr but for their families and friends it has been a pain in the butt,” Butterfield said. “Now the grandma who doesn’t speak English at all can take advantage of our features and more easily do things such as save her grandchildren’s pictures or upload some of her own,” Flickr founder Stewart Butterfield said.

Butterfield estimated that with the expanded languages Flickr now had web pages tailored to 90 percent of its users. Approximately 24.8 million people visit Flickr monthly, according to marketing research firm comScore.

iStockphoto adds enhanced search capabilities, new video formats, six additional languages

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istockphoto.jpgiStockphoto, one of the world’s busiest image and video market, announced a significant site update, adding more sellable video formats to the product mix, and increasing the reach and usability of the website. iStock has implemented some exciting new search capabilities, and the ability to download videos in .wmv and .mp4 formats. As part of its international expansion efforts, the company has added localized sites in Japanese, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, Polish and Russian, making it the only microstock site fully searchable in 12 languages and viewable in 10.

“Our community continues to grow at a remarkable pace – our challenge is to stay on top of what clients from all over the world need,” said Bruce Livingstone, CEO of iStockphoto. “On the video side, we are finding more customers want a simple way to drop video clips into their PowerPoint presentations – these additional formats will help the collection meet their evolving needs.”