

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

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&#x27;re first move be?
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stefanocutello
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/](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](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.

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bjansn
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.

~~~
Dimitris
Did you just reply to your own question?

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

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

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viennacoder
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.

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reinierladan
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.

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

