'Talking photographs' to change social networking

Social networking is set to enter a new phase with the launch of a web-based photography solution that allows real-time sharing of pictures taken through mobile phones.

Created by US-based firm, AirMe Inc. an innovator in mobile media applications space, photoWall's technology enables multiple users to take photos, instantly tag them and send to their Flickr or Facebook accounts.

Users can also create an instant photo album on the web with respect to a context, to which multiple people can contribute from their mobile phones.

photoWall, to be virtually launched globally and in India tomorrow, has been created to be "a global platform for sharing real time user generated mobile content", Apoorva Ruparel, co-founder and vice-president strategy and marketing of AirMe, told PTI.

"photoWall is the only of its kind in the world which uploads pictures from mobile phone and can sync it to other social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter", he said.

It is "a free and light downloadable" application that can be downloaded to your mobile phone.

PhotoWall users can not only click a picture and tag it with their comments in text, but can also choose to add a seven second voice tag, describing their click in their own voice, Ruparel said.

India, with a total mobile subscriber base of around 300 million GSM users with 27 million of them using GPRS actively, has proven to be "one of the most lucrative mobile markets because of its sheer size, population and consistent increase in the average disposable income", he said.

Being a country of people with very close social ties and a huge geographic spread, applications like photoWall bring family and friends closer, he said.

To a question, he said, "PhotoWall has been field tested successfully in India on low end phones and our media upload performances have been benchmarked in low speed 2G networks.

photoWall's quality control process does not allow any inappropriate content to be shared".

The firm forsees a huge surge in demand for applications like photoWall "with 3G licences being auctioned in January 2010".

photoWall, has entered into an agreement with Microsoft for promotion and advertising sales. MSN India is key channel partner, he said.