11 Social Media Networks For Photographers

When it comes to being a photographer, there is no shortage of online networks for you to share your images, interact with others and potentially grow your business. From Google+ to Facebook, Twitter to Pinterest, 500px to Flickr, you have more options at your disposal now then ever before.

I’ve always maintained that digital photography’s biggest advantage always lay in this fact: you can always copy a picture to your computing device and share it across the Internet media: at a rate which the traditional media can only dream of.

As I mentioned earlier, when it comes to the sheer number of social networks that you as a photographer have access to, the number can be some what intimidating. How many people truly know which networks they should be on or where they should focus their limited time and energy? I imagine that most are simply guessing. So lets do a fairly simple break down of each of the networks, their positive and negative traits and which each Network is good at offering different types of photographers.

1. Flickr

Yahoo’s Flickr is probably the most well-known photo sharing site in the Web 2.0 world. In terms of its social features and user community, no other service even comes close. However, development has been slow over the last two years and some of the newer services have surpassed Flickr’s feature set. Also, while Flickr has no storage limits, you can only upload 100 megabytes a month. If you are looking for a free service, we still recommend Flickr over its competitors, not the least because it is supported by almost every desktop photo application.

Pros: active community; easy sharing; groups; Creative Commons licensing; RSS feeds for everything

Cons: might still be a bit too complicated for some mainstream users

2. Picasa Web Albums

Google’s Picasa Web Albums profits greatly from its tight integration with Picasa, Google’s popular desktop photo management application. Picasa also benefits from Google’s minimalist design philosophy, which has kept the service extremely easy to use, even as Google has added new features over the last two years. The latest update to Picasa also added a lot of social features to the site, but we think it still doesn’t match the feature set and active community of Flickr.

Pros: easy to use; face recognition; integration with Picasa; Creative Commons licensing

Cons: only 1GB storage with free account

3. Instagram

Instagram is easily the top third social media network for budding photographers. It started off initially as an iOS-exclusive app and was later bought by Facebook itself for a whopping $1 billion. Recently, it celebrated the first anniversary of its Android app. It is also promoted and integrated into Facebook’s own launches. Instagram reached 100 million users earlier this year as well.

Instagram is a free photo sharing application that allows users to take photos, apply a filter, and share it on the service or a variety of other social networking services, including Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Tumblr, Flickr, and Posterous.

Pros: Great filter, easy share options

Cons: Not much support for desktop users and seems to be smartphone/tablet centric

4. SmugMug

SmugMug is our recommendation if you are willing to pay for your photo hosting. You do indeed get what you pay for. SmugMug is incredibly easy to use and is also one of the few services that accept uploads in the RAW format (if you enable the SmugVault). SmugMug courts professional photographers, who will especially like the fact that they can theme their accounts. Also, out of all the services we looked at, SmugMug had the best selection of theme templates.

Pros: easy to use; lots of options; rich feature set

Cons: not free (but worth the money)

5. Me.com

Apple’s Me.com is a bit of an outsider here, as the gallery feature is only a small part of an extensive productivity suite. Thanks to its tight integration with iLife, its image gallery feature represents a good alternative for those who already subscribe to Me.com. We would not recommend Me.com to Windows users, by the way, as it integrates poorly with both Vista and XP. If you just want an easy way to share some pictures from iPhoto, you could do worse than using Me.com. If anything, the galleries are very well designed, even though the functionality of the service is quite limited.

Pros: tight integration with OSX and iLife; gorgeous galleries; very easy to use

Cons: very limited functionality; almost no social features

6. Photobucket

Photobucket is incredibly popular, but it also has some of the more stringent restrictions for its free accounts. Your pictures, for example, can’t be larger than 1024×786. Thanks to its integration with Facebook, Photobucket is a popular spot for sharing pictures from college parties, but we wouldn’t recommend it for regular use over Flickr.

Pros: easy to use; very easy to share pictures on social networking sites

Cons: lots of ads; limited functionality; no upload client; free account very limited

7. Kodak Gallery

Like many of its mainstream brethren, Kodak Gallery is squarely focused on getting you and your friends to print your pictures. Its feature set lacks depth for advanced users, but Kodak Gallery is easy to use and does have some surprisingly useful image editing features, including red-eye removal and photo cropping, as well as a limited range of effects and borders. As long as you make one purchase from the site per year, you get unlimited storage space and uploads, which makes it a good service if you tend to print pictures anyway.

Pros: easy to use; unlimited storage

Cons: no social features; limited sharing functions

8. Shutterfly

Shutterfly is also aimed at mainstream users, though it sets itself apart from some of the other services by offering a wider set of options for printing, including stickers, books, and cards. Its user interface is also very well designed.

Pros: unlimited storage; great printing options; easy to use

Cons: limited sharing options and social features

9. Webshots

Webshots sits somewhere between the mainstream and social sharing market. The site offers a good number of advanced features like tagging, groups, site-wide search, and a large number of sharing options. At the same time, it is also very easy to use for less tech-savvy users and features a wealth of printing options. Its upload restrictions are similar to Fickr’s, though it allows you to upload 1000 pictures in your first month (5000 for pro accounts) and then 100 for every following month.

Pros: easy to use; lots of features; large user community

Cons: upload restrictions; lots of ads on the site

10. Snapfish

Snapfish is squarely targeted at mainstream users, though its interface could be more intuitive and the service has not really improved much over the years. The social features of the site are limited to sharing links by email.

Pros: themed galleries; lots of choices for prints, including books, stickers, mugs etc.

Cons: no social features; convoluted interface

11. Phanfare

Phanfare turned out to be a nice surprise, thanks to its extensive feature set, including a good selection of gallery themes, the ability to import photos from other online photo sharing apps, an iPhone app, and a well designed user interface.

Pros: easy to use; nice shared galleries; geotagging

Cons: just 1GB of storage with free accounts; unlimited accounts are pricey

Did we miss out your favorite social media network for photographers? Please let us know about it in the comments section below.

Image Courtesy |  shuttershock

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