Recently I’ve noticed a huge flaw in Facebook photos. Collaboration. For a social network you’d think that after 500 million + users and a blockbuster film, they’d have figured out that groups of friends attend the same event, but there’s no way to have everyone’s photos of the same event in 1 album. So I’ve been on the hunt for a site/app that let’s multiple users contribute to the same photo album. I was surprised to find there aren’t many, and those that do exist don’t fulfil the true need for this. The site that comes closest is Zangzing.
Zangzing is the best looking, most functional and easiest to use collaborative photo sharing site that exists (in my opinion). Start an album, upload some photos then either opt to let anyone add photos to your album, or only those that you invite. They don’t even have to be members of Zangzing. You can even upload full-res photos and enable the group to download them. This I find particularly useful as when my friend, who has a really nice SLR, uploads his photos to Facebook, downloading them to have as a desktop background or photo print is pointless because the quality is so crap.
I love the idea of letting anyone add photos to an album. It is risky, but I made great use of it recently when Bournemouth flooded and during the Bournemouth Airshow, uploading my own photos as it happened and enabling others to do the same so there were many accounts from different places of different things but at the same event. This would be a great free tool for brands to use as a social UCG (user generated content) type exercise.
I’ve also made good use of private group albums with my girlfriend. We recently got 2 kittens and like to take photos of them as a memory of when they were little. Using Zangzing, we can both upload our photos of the cats to the same album.
It is frustrating that there is no mobile app yet, but while they are working on one you are able to upload photos via email, which does the job. What I really feel is missing is the ability to do more than photos. Maybe Zangzing isn’t the right format but I don’t know of anything that let’s you upload photos, videos and comments into an album-like format, that is collaborative. Life is shared with other people and I don’t care who took the photo or video, I just want have them all in one place, for everyone to comment on, enjoy and keep as their own. It’s times like these I wish I could build web-apps.