Techcrunch ? Blog Archive ? New Photo Sharing Site: Se Habla Espa?ol…Et Fran?aisOrange, a subsidiary of France Telecom, has opened their Pikeo photo sharing beta up to the public. In addition to the TechCrunch article linked above you can read more about it here at Nice Mustard as well.
The photo sharing site initially will be in English, Spanish and French and will focus on geotagging images.
Probably the most important thing to keep in mind with Pikeo is that it has the power of Orange and France Telecom behind it. We have only begun to see a fraction of the power of the mobile phone market for photo sharing sites.
Mobile providers want their customers to use photo sharing sites with their camera phones because they use up data minutes. They also give people something else to do with their mobile phone, making it a more and more integral part of their life and a more rewarding experience for their users.
The mobile companies basically all will need to begin offering photo sharing services. The question will be to build, buy or partner. In this case France Telecom has elected to build.
Particularly as mobile phones increasingly build in geo location functionality, geo tagging camera phone photos will get bigger and bigger.
By having a built in partnership with France Telecom (as a subsidiary) Pikeo will be able to ramp up and build an image library pretty quickly as Orange begins to market Pikeo to their users.