Flickr alternatives for foreigners?

January 6, 2010 6:55 AM

Are there better alternatives to flickr for sharing photos with a large group of international people? I'm trying to come up with an easy way to have access from the US to people's photos from abroad -- particularly the Mid East, Philippines, South Africa, and Argentina -- without having to e-mail multiple attachments or send photo CDs through the mail.

I work at a non-profit that has fellows and staffmembers abroad, with large concentrations in the Mid East, the Philippines, South Africa, and Argentina.

We have trouble getting them to send us their new photos. Part of it is apathy or laziness on their part -- they have the digital photos but they just don't bother to send us the e-mail -- and part of it is technical -- many don't have high-speed internet and it's hard to send multiple high-quality attachments.

I'm thinking that if we encouraged them to open flickr accounts and upload their high-quality photos there, then we could download them from here. But I know that, for example, flickr does not have Arabic language support (although maybe with Yahoo-ownership, this will change?).

Are there more-popular flickr equivalents abroad? I really want something that is easy/pleasurable for them to use. So if there's something that all their other Jordanian friends and colleagues are on, they'd be more likely to start using it.

posted by thebazilist to computers & internet (7 answers total)

But I know that, for example, flickr does not have Arabic language support (although maybe with Yahoo-ownership, this will change?).

I don't read Arabic, but it looks like Flickr supports Arabic to me.

I've seen photos with comments in Arabic on flickr for a few years.
posted by b1tr0t at 7:03 AM on January 6, 2010

Sorry, I meant that the flickr interface itself is not in Arabic, or that they don't have an Arabic version, like they do for French, etc.
posted by thebazilist at 7:14 AM on January 6, 2010

If there internet connection is too slow to attache photos to an email, then it is going to be just as slow when trying to upload multiple pictures to flickr. You may want to encourage/teach them to reduce the size and resolution of their images to make them smaller and easier to send/upload.
posted by nestor_makhno at 7:22 AM on January 6, 2010

The easiest solution I can think of is to install dropbox, which is just a folder that lives on your desktop. when you drag files into it, they get uploaded to the dropbox cloud. if you have access to the account then you can dl the photos yourself.

more complicated: install and teach them how to use stacey, which is also a folder that you drag files into which magically makes a lovely indexed portfolio website.
posted by acidic at 7:39 AM on January 6, 2010

Could they use the photo applications in Facebook, hugely popular with many people and also in many languages. That's where I see most of my friends photos these days. I'm sure there are many batch photo uploaders for facebook also.
posted by DOUBLE A SIDE at 8:24 AM on January 6, 2010

Many of the people don't have their own computers to be installing programs on, so I do want it to be an online solution.

And the reason that Facebook isn't good is because I want high-quality photos. Yes, it will be equally as slow to upload high-res photos to whatever site as to e-mail them, but maybe they'll have more of an incentive to take that time if after the uploading, they have something that will be useful to them (access to their own photos online, social networking, etc) as well as to us.
posted by thebazilist at 7:14 PM on January 6, 2010

From what I can tell Flikr allows you to load files up to 10mb on free accounts, facebook up to 15mb. So seems facebook might be better quality?
posted by DOUBLE A SIDE at 11:23 PM on January 6, 2010