Ask HN: You're running a shared photoalbum startup, how will you battle Facebook | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: You're running a shared photoalbum startup, how will you battle Facebook

7 pointsbjansn8 comments

So Facebook announced shared photoalbums and already is rolling it out. Several media outlets have written pretty horrific scenarios about the future of shared photo album startups like Albumatic. If you were leading one of these startups, how would you battle Facebook? What would you're first move be?

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We at PastBook.com were working on a project to make easier to create books in a collaborative way - allowing people from different places and devices to put photos (but not just photos) together, to create stories and keep those memories save forever, even printing them in a book.

We saw this behavior raising up especially around gifting like "put together some crazy photo for the birthday of a common friend" or "having all the photos of a wedding from the different points of view of the guests" or "collecting the photos from a company party or an event".

Main problem in doing this was that still a lot of users are not sharing all their photos on Facebook or they simply prefer to share them somewhere else.

That's why we started working to extend this feature to allow people to simply put photos together independently from where those photos are posted/shared/saved. Then up-sell premium services like, for instance, printing.

We were not ready to launch, but I put together a landing page on unbounce (http://hello.pastbook.com/shared-albums-for-everybody/) to receive feedbacks and beta users, just posted on hackernews few minutes ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6283051).

It's built from developers with developer in mind: we'll allow every other photo-app to use our API to push/get content from these shared albums and provide books (PDF/PRINTED) on demand, as potential revenue stream for a lot of startups in the photography business looking for monetization channels.

My first move would be to work towards a niche. Smaller but more loyal user base. I've only used Albumatic myself and loved to use it with a couple of nights out with my friends. I'd still consider setting up an Albumatic album instead of Facebook because the standalone app was a great experience.

Second would be to focus on other social networks rather than Facebook, probably Social Networks in Asia and other parts in the world.

Did you just reply to your own question?

Yeah, coining my own opinion. Should have done that in opening post?

I think it would have been more reasonable. I was baffled for a moment.

I would do a mobile app that focused on privacy and photo rights. Kind of similar to apple's photo stream, but something that works on android too.

If you can include some sort of messaging functionality (like whatsapp) that would be good. The integration of photos and messages would need to be elegant though.

Mobile is facebook's Achilles heel.

It's a really hard space to break into. The odds are against you.

First, I would focus on privacy. Second, on specific photo tools that Facebook isn't going to offer. Make sure that people can easily sign up during a party or an event at which a group of people is taking pictures and want to share them (afterwards). Make 'joining' an album free and let the 'album owner' pay.

If you haven't reached traction already then you might as well pivot. FB has a huge advantage hete

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