Divvyshot (YC W09) launches refreshingly simple photo sharing

http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-10452446-250.html

by zaveri • 16 years ago

42 14 16 years ago

news.cnet.com

gbookman2• 16 years ago

The three experiences founder Sam Odio described in this interview really shows how valuable Divvyshot is:

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-2901-NY-Business-Strategi...

decode2• 16 years ago

> I went to Costa Rica with three other friends. At the end of the trip each of us had about 1GB of photos. [...] The entire process was cumbersome and took about an hour.

This means that each person "uploaded" 1GB of data and "downloaded" 3GB of data. In total, 16 GB of data was transferred. Doing this manually via USB drive is about an order of magnitude faster than over your average broadband Internet connection. It's not clear to me that Divvyshot has solved the problem here.

> I never ended up getting that group photo - even though low resolution copies of it tantalize me on Facebook.

I was surprised to realize several years ago that one of Facebook's greatest contributions to my life was that it completely solved the photo sharing problem and had done it so well that I didn't even notice. Now I get everyone's photos from every event, I get notified when they're uploaded, and it seems like everyone I know can use it without problems. Sure, I wish it supported higher resolutions, but the medium-res images are good enough for 95% of people. If they would just allow slightly higher resolutions, then it would be perfect for almost all of my needs.

Sam_Odio3• 16 years ago

> Sure, I wish it supported higher resolutions, but the medium-res images are good enough for 95% of people.

Where did you get 95%? I've heard this before yet I don't know of anyone (besides us) who's actually taken the time to ask users if med-res is good enough.

When founding Divvyshot I used Amazon mechanical turk to conduct a quick market survey (with hundreds of respondents). A few highlights:

77% of respondents knew what hi-resolution photos were and preferred them.

43% had manually increased the resolution setting on their camera.

77% had been promised photos from a social event within the last few months and had never received them.

gbookman2• 16 years ago

Doing this manually via USB drive is about an order of magnitude faster than over your average broadband Internet connection.

Some downsides to using flash drives over DivvyShot: a) Not everyone has one; b) Not everyone knows how to use one; c) Limited space; d) Inconvenient--everyone has to be together and wait around while the other guys transfer their files over. With Divvyshot, you can upload/download photos whenever you want.

one of Facebook's greatest contributions to my life was that it completely solved the photo sharing problem

Facebook is definitely a convenient way to share photos, if you and all your friends have profiles and set them up properly. For people who just want to share photos and not deal with all of Facebook's features, DivvyShot is quite compelling.

jdietrich• 16 years ago

It's rather juvenile of me, but the name makes me laugh - in the dialect of my native Liverpool, the word 'divvy' means idiot.

On a less juvenile note, the UX looks beautiful, but I would imagine that it would be hard to convince people to abandon the perfectly serviceable methods that they are using to share photos already.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=divvy

mleonhard• 16 years ago

How do they plan to make money?

Sam_Odio3• 16 years ago

We have an announcement to make about that in about 2-3 months. Stay tuned ;)

TheSOB88• 16 years ago

Comes across as an awfully bad name; I hope they change it. Sounds like they wanted "Shareshot", but it was taken. Divvy's an awkward word. Plus, it apparently means 'idiot' in Liverpudlian.

Sam_Odio3• 16 years ago

Unfortunately there aren't very many names available to startups these days. You can thank domain squatters for that. Once we can afford to buy something nicer we'll probably get rid of Divvy.

In the meantime we just have to take heart that the population of the liverpool metro area (850k) is 0.01% of the world's population.

nedwin• 16 years ago

In Australia a "divvy van" is slang for a police car with a cage in the back for transporting prisoners. It didn't come to mind when I thought of Divvyshot until this thread :)

Raphael• 16 years ago

No, it's exactly the right name. The distinguishing feature is collaborative albums, where the work is divided, or 'divvied' up, between friends.

Divvyshot (YC W09) launches refreshingly simple photo sharing

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