Hacker News Reader

Comment by jimboyoungblood | Hacker News Reader

We were indeed the first to really identify the market for mobile photo sharing.

Really, indeed. I built an iPhone photo sharing app about two years ago (It was my self-assigned "How to program in Objective C" project), and there were at least several others that came before mine.

View on HN

Don't forget MMS. That came long before...

Yup, as well as Mobog, Natuba, BuzzFeed, circa 2005.

So true. The mobile photo sharing space has been around for 5+ years, it's just that most users only caught on with iphones and other smartphones becoming more popular.

To claim that this space was 'created' last year and that 'sharing your cameraroll' was a brilliant innovative idea then, is just wrong.

Not knowing about BuzzFeed etc. and why they didn't catch on might explain why this attempt didn't catch on either. Remarkable that they didn't know who's shoulders they were standing on.

I think what he means here is, see the market opportunity and raise money against that, not just build it.

Even if that's what he meant, it's still false.

Even with that definition, there was Shozu, which was founded in 2001 and raised over $36M. At least by 2005, they had significant traction with their mobile photo sharing tools.

LightSurf, 1995, founded by Sonia Lee and her husband Borland founder Philippe Kahn: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LightSurf_Technologies

Reply on news.ycombinator.com