Polaroid wants to print your Instagrams | Hacker News Reader

Polaroid wants to print your Instagrams

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32 pointszonotope19 comments

Anyone else think this was an Onion article when they read the headline?

The onion did an article very similar to this: http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-apple-ceo-tim-cook-im-t...

This article headline is deceiving.

This is not actually Polaroid, but rather a already-existing photo printing company which is licensing the use of the Polaroid brand for their new expansion stores. The people involved with this have nothing to do with the "Polaroid" camera team of way back (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaroid_Corporation#Use_of_Pol... for more info)

the team i was on at myspace in 2009 did an integration w polaroid. it never really took off.

hopefully instagram has better success.

> hopefully instagram has better success.

Instagram isn't involved here, besides being a potential source of imagery.

This is all Polaroid.

> MySpace > 2009

Well there's your problem

This is not really a service suitable for a full retail store.

This is a service ideal for a tiny panel in a wall at some major high-street retailer. Except many people have done that before, the only difference would be this one is Polaroid branded.

Do stores in the US not have instant photo-printing machines? In the UK the Boots pharmacy (and other shops) have machines with a range of inputs (which may include bluetooth?) which can print 6x4s instantly. It costs far less than $15 a print.

Most Drug stores I've been to in the US do photo printing. At CVS I think it's around 20 cents for a 4x6.

I've never seen one that will do it over wifi or bluetooth, however; every one I've seen requires a physical mediumn.

My local photographic equipment store already offers printing photos from a usb connection to a mobile phone, so what polaroid is offering here is guidance for editing those photos.

i don't see how this will make polaroid relevant again, as there are already loads of services which do exactly that online.

i also doubt the business model. you need to sell boatloads of printouts every month to operate 2000 square feet retail shops in top locations. i just don't see how this can ever break even.

Seems more interesting to me to do this via web vs. retail. We're driving for the web at Instacanvas (http://instacanv.as).

Thoughts on web vs. retail for physical photo products?

There are already plenty of sites that do this exclusively online for the same/cheaper price point. It'll be interesting to see if a store-front will be a good investment considering the high overhead cost.

Haven't compared the price points, but if you want to support a YC alum, check out Picplum's Instagram integration: https://www.picplum.com/instagram

I imagine they hope people will go to these stores for the same reason they go to Apple's retail stores instead of just shopping for Apple products online:

1) Immediate gratification. Sure it takes less time to order prints (or Apple computers) online and then get them out of the mailbox, but if you want a print (or computer) fast without waiting for shipping you can just drive to your local store and 5-10 mins later walk out with a purchase. There is a lot of value to that. 2) "Genius bar" The article states that there will be people who can provide photo editing help and advice in the store. 3) The "cool effect". If you post on Path, or FourSquare, or Facebook that you are at an Apple store you get a lot of "likes". (At least in my peer group) It's a status symbol to go to an Apple store (and Starbucks is the same way) If Polaroid can pull off this same image with their stores which will have a similar clientele they have a guaranteed money fountain.

I'm not so sure that there's an analogous Genius Bar for photo editing because the audience* doesn't care about real editing.

It seems like modern consumer photography has deteriorated to the "filter = art" style and most of my friends (20-35 demographic) don't seem to spend time doing things like contrast & lighting adjustments. I still do, but only for photos which will make it out of my Lightroom or iPhoto library which accounts for maybe 5-15% of what I actually shoot and keep.

*Perhaps the audience is predominantly outside my own 20-35 demographic and I've made a bad assumption; it's early to tell.

Status symbol: what do you do to show that you're at the Polaroid store? Take a picture of the printed picture and post it on Facebook.

A service that scans your Polaroids and puts them on Instagram might be more promising.

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