Photo/image hosting brainstorm post

[denise]

So, now that mark is working for Dreamwidth fulltime, we're going to be working on many of the "big" projects that we want to do. One of them is a DW-native form of photo/image hosting that will let people upload images, maintain image galleries, quickly post images, etc, etc.

It'll be a while before we can have something released, but we're starting the design-and-spec process now! We have some ideas of our own about how it should work and what features it should contain, but we're turning to you guys right now at the very start, before we say anything about how we want things to work, to get your input and ideas without influencing them.

What features do you guys look for in photo/image hosting? What would you consider a "must have"? What would you consider to be nice but not necessary? What would be your "killer app" for image hosting -- the thing that would make you go "oh wow!" a lot and recommend it to all your friends?

Don't think about whether something's possible or not -- we want to hear your pie-in-the-sky ideas, your craziest thoughts, as well as your list of what features you'd absolutely require before you started to use it.

Comments

[lap_otter]

I would want an option, right on the upload page, to upload several at once. The ones I've found that I like best for this add another little textbox and browse button as soon as you fill the first, so there's always as many as you need and you can do as many as you like all at once.

A tags system would be nice, and a way to browse by tag.

And if you incorporate the idea of "galleries"--for god's sake, please make it make some sense. Livejournal's galleries and tags and the entire THING are impossible to use and they make between zero and -6 sense--on a scale of one to ten.

...I don't use Dreamwidth much, because no one I know uses it and so posting would be relatively pointless, but I really do love it to death over Livejournal. It's just cleaner, smoother, nicer--and the best part is that you guys are constantly trying to improve it, and that you invite input from users, and that we can see what you're doing. If Livejournal updates something, I don't even notice it until suddenly I don't know how to do something anymore. Here, I know what's going on all the time, and I love that.

[yvi]

Livejournal's galleries and tags and the entire THING are impossible to use and they make between zero and -6 sense--on a scale of one to ten.

Oh Gosh, yes. Glad to see I am not the only one frustrated by the system.

[green_knight]

You're not. It's slow, it's cumbersome, you need to upload and then try to get it to the right place and... I've used it when I wanted to restrict pictures, but I hate it.

[hendrikboom]

Most of my online friends are also on Livejournal. I post to my blog here, and have it automatically propagated to Livejournal. It just seems to be a good idea to have my posts in two places, just in case one goes sour.

But I still have to use both sites to see what others are writing, either in response or on their own.

-- hendrik

[jumpuphigh]

I would want an option, right on the upload page, to upload several at once.

This. I actually find FB's photo uploader to be a fairly nice way of uploading. I prefer the "check the photos you want" version but don't get too fussed with either.

First time using preview on DW commenting and omg awesome. Being able to preview without having to go through spell-check first is so wonderfully convenient.