Fotolog

Fotolog.com, Fotolog.net, is a Web 2.0-based shared photoblog web site. With over 30 million registered users, it is one of the oldest and largest sites for sharing pictures through online photo diaries or photo blogs. 

Usage

Free account

The website offers both free and subscription accounts. The free version is ad-supported, and limits users to uploading one picture per day, and having only 20 comments (in their "guestbook"). The free user can also customize their page and add other fotologs into their "Friends/Favorites" list.

Gold Camera Members

Paying members, known as "Gold Camera patrons" can upload up to 6 pictures a day, have 200 comments per photo and can access better customer support. Recent changes mean that Gold Cam members can comment on any guestbook that is full. Other new features include customized photo-headings, and having the most recent image appear beside the members name when commenting on other photoblogs.

Groups

The Groups are fotologs that are of a certain topic. Groups are managed by fotolog users. Fotolog groups are allowed 50 photos per day. These photos may be added by any member of the Fotolog community.

Success

Its rapid growth was most notable in the Americas, and although the site is from the U.S., the majority of its users come from South America. As of September 2, 2008 Chile claims the most accounts (4,827,387), Argentina is second with 4,225,209, while Brazil has 1,443,474 users. Fotolog's success prompted many other websites to appear and compete. In Spanish, and also in Portuguese, the word fotolog is almost universally understood to mean any photoblog.

For a long time, Brazil was the country with most users, but in recent years the site lost its popularity to Orkut.

In Argentina and Uruguay, Fotolog gave rise to a fashion trend, called 'Flogger'. Chilean urban tribe pokemones made extensive use of Fotolog.

As of December 28, 2008, Fotolog.com had 22,952,102 accounts.

History

Launched in May 2002, the Fotolog site generates over 3 billion page views and receives over 20 million unique visitors each month. Recently, Fotolog.com entered the list of the top 20 sites in the Alexa global site rankings.

Fotolog is a registered trademark of Fotolog, Inc., which is a privately held company backed by BV Capital, 3i and several individual investors. Fotolog headquarters are in New York City. On August, 17th, 2007, french online advertising company Hi-Media agreed to acquire Fotolog for 65,8 million euros (77 % Hi Media stock, 23 % cash). The deal is due to be closed in November.

The site had frequent technical problems, partly due to the rapid growth of the site. Indeed, on December 10, 2005, the site stated that "Fotolog is currently able to accept 1,000 new free members from each country each day", up from 500 a day previously. According to Fotolog co-founder Scott Heiferman, recent upgrades have made the site much faster and as of November 16, 2005, Fotolog was generating 750 million pageviews a month .

The site has since received improvements. Two years ago, free members could not upload during peak hours, and only 500 people a day (per country) were welcomed in. In mid 2006, 10,000 people per day, per country were allowed to join the community, and for August 14, 2006, the limiting of daily registrations was removed.

Fotolog recently received a large investment of 2.4 million dollars from BV Capital  This investment has made possible the recent upgrades to the site.

In Spring 2006, a book of photographs from fotolog.com was published by the UK publisher Thames & Hudson titled fotolog.book: A Global Snapshot for the Digital Age. Edited by Andrew Long and containing text contributions by Nick Currie, the book is organized in sections highlighting several themes that arose in the site's community of photographers and several individual photographers from some of the major cities and countries with many fotolog users.