The world of digital photography had a shot in the arm yesterday when Facebook picked up Instagram for $1 billion, and it’s perhaps a sign of how all players in that space now need to up their game. Today brings news of a development from Photobucket, the online photo site that scored a huge deal last year when Twitter announced that it would power its image service. Photobucket today announced a deal with Pixlr, the cloud-based photo editing service from Autodesk, in which Pixlr’s tools will be integrated into Photobucket’s site.

The deal will see Pixlr replace Photobucket’s current editing service, FotoFlexer, which had been working with the site since 2008.

The announcement comes one week after Flickr announced that it was picking Aviary for its photo-editing services.

Photobucket, which now has 100 million users on its platform (not counting numbers from Twitter, which it does not share), says that the new service will come in two tiers of service, a more in-depth Pixlr Editor, which looks a lot like Photoshop, and a version called Pixlr Express with more basic functions for quick edits.

The service will also give Photobucket the option of monetizing its service a bit more: advertisers, it says, will be able to create branded effects through the service for Photobucket ad packages.

The deal is a big one for Pixlr, which only has about 25 million users at the moment, and underscores how a bunch of new entrants with strong services are jumping into the vacuum created with the departure of Picnik, which shut up shop after it got acquired by Google.

While the Instagram/Facebook deal certainly points to how closely photography is becoming aligned with mobile, there is still a big market for digital camera use and editing online, according to Tom Munro, the CEO of Photobucket, who says of that deal: “I love the attention that the photo and video space is getting lately. If you go back three years it was kind of flat. But now it seems like there’s something happening every day.”

At the moment around 25-30 percent of photos on Photobucket come from mobile devices, Munro says — although the proportion is growing. In the last year, he says that the amount of mobile video on the site has grown by 15-16 times. It’s a market that Photobucket is trying to grab in its own way: it has Photobucket for iPhone, iPad and Snapbucket for iPhone, as well as Android apps. One of the features Munro says it’s looking to pursue is ways of letting users create their own filters that they could then apply via apps.

(Photobucket’s mobile numbers, by the way, do not include Twitter traffic, which would probably skew it even further to mobile. Photobucket does not give out numbers related to its deal with Twitter.)

Munro says that currently Photobucket images are used across 2.5 million websites, with 4 billion images served across those sites daily.

But while Photobucket continues to expand that network and the service it offers to users on its own platform, Munro notes that the company is pursuing more white-label deals along the lines of what it has established with Twitter. “We are talking to others for Twitter-like deals,” he says. “We are having conversations. We do have an expertise in hosting photos and videos and we are seeing interest.” He notes that that interest has not extended to conversations with Pinterest.

It’s been two and a half months since Twitter first unveiled their own photo sharing service, in partnership with Photobucket. Just last week, they finished rolling it out to all users. Today, they’re taking the next step: opening it up to third-party developers.

As they’ve just announced on the Twitter Developers blog, there’s a new Photo Upload API that’s ready for developers outside the company to play around with. While plenty of third-party Twitter services have had photo uploads for a while, they often use their own method for doing it, or use a bigger player like TwitPic or yFrog. With the new API, they’ll be able to upload, store, and servce the images on Twitter’s servers in conjunction with Photobucket.

Notes Twitter:

If you’ve used OAuth Echo for image uploads, you’ll find that the new method available at POST statuses/update_with_media is simpler and requires fewer dependencies. One of the first things you’ll notice about this method is the host name: status updates with media can only be executed on upload.twitter.com rather than api.twitter.com. Using this alternative host name for the upload path ensures high availability and flexibility.

Beyond the “high availability” good news, you’ll note that “update_with_media” aspect. It would seem that Twitter is leaving the door open to media beyond photos, perhaps video, for example. Twitter says they have nothing to announce in that regard at this time. Again, they’re undoubtedly just leaving it open-ended for the future.

In order to use the service, Twitter asks that developers follow their display guidelines, which are pretty straightforward. One thing to note, they ask you use pic.twitter.com/SLUG instead of t.co/SLUG, seemingly to let users know it’s a picture coming their way on click.

Also, sadly, animated GIFs are not supported. Actually, thank god.

Twitter also notes that the photos services will “soon” be incorporated into the Twitter mobile clients as well. But there’s “no timeline to share” yet. Methinks it will be ready sometime before iOS 5 is launched this fall, which relies on it.

Twitter’s PR team has just sent out a tweet updating users. “Currently, Twitter employees can upload #photos to Twitter.com. We’ll start slowly rolling this out to users next week,” Twitter’s Carolyn Penner writes. You can see a collection of early pictures here. Again, Twitter employees have already begun tweeting with the new feature, using the pic.twitter.com URL.

The initial roll-out to users should still take a few weeks to be completed. And it will focus on twitter.com at first — meaning photo uploads will have to come from there. The mobile client integration will follow, but there will be Twitter Photo viewing capabilities right away.

While Twitter Photos is done in partnership with Photobucket, the company wants to make it clear that you don’t need a Photobucket account to use it. Further, the photos are only going to be visible on Twitter, and not on Photobucket itself.

Currently, Twitter employees can upload #photos to Twitter.com. We'll start slowly rolling this out to users next week. http://bit.ly/maoib0—
Twitter Comms (@twitterglobalpr) June 03, 2011

Yesterday, leading up to today’s announcement of Twitter’s new photo sharing capabilities, we reported hearing that Twitter had approached some ecosystem players months ago about their potential move into the arena. One player not consulted? A massive one: Twitpic.

“We never heard from Twitter that they were building a photo feature,” Twitpic founder Noah Everett tells us. That’s interesting since yFrog and Plixi (formerly Tweetphoto) were approached, we’ve heard. Also clearly approached, Photobucket, which ended up scoring a deal to host the images for Twitter.

Twitpic, the longtime leader in the space, understandably, is annoyed by this.

“We understand that Twitter owns and controls the platform, but a clearer roadmap from them and better communication would have been appreciated by us and all the developers,” Everett says. “We’ve always had Twitter’s best interest in mind with building and running Twitpic, we would have hoped the same from Twitter, at least in the form of better communication,” he continues.

Ouch.

This is the same complaint that many ecosystem players have had over the past year with Twitter as they continue to “fill holes” in their product. Many have spoken about being blind-sided as Twitter moved to essentially crush their businesses — businesses built on top of Twitter, mind you.

But it seemed that Twitter had finally learned their lesson here given the talks with yFrog and others well ahead of a launch. Apparently not. Those may have been more about deals for the product (or more), it turns out.

Twitter is clearly free to do as it pleases, and absolutely has a duty to do what they think is in their best interest business-wise and product-wise. But the continual pissing off of the ecosystem partners creates an atmosphere of bad blood. It is business, not personal, but for the players like Twitpic, it must seem like both at times.

“Twitpic will continue to run just as we always have. The brand we’ve built is strong,” Everett concludes. All I know for sure is that they appear to be another tale that will cause third-party developers to sleep with both eyes open.

Update: To be fair, last year at their Chirp conference, Twitter did (sort of) warn that they could get into this the photo space. Below, Jason’s notes that he took at the time:

Q: Is Twitter going to host rich media (images/video/etc)?
Ev Williams: The honest answer is we haven’t made a decision. We love that we don’t have to host media. But we also think there are user experience issues with it. Photos are a fundamental way people share information. They fit in twitter very well. Lots of people have provided that functionality. We think it’s great, we’re looking at how to make it easier.
Ryan Sarver: We’ve been working on a spec that would allow any media provider to send through an API.
Ev Williams: We’re going to make it easier to both share and view pics in our interface. We can’t guarantee that we won’t host media if it’s needed. Not in immediate plans this quarter.

Twitter has just announced on their blog two new key bits of functionality: improved search and photos. The latter, we’ve obviously been all over in recent days, as we first broke the news a couple days ago. The former, we mentioned was likely coming as well. But there are a few details we didn’t know.

First of all, today brings a completely new version of Twitter Search that promises “more relevant” tweets, but also shows you related pictures and videos in the right-side pane. Even more interesting is that Twitter has partnered with Mozilla for a new version of the Firefox browser with Twitter built into the search bar. (There is also an add-on for current Firefox users.)

Notes Twitter:

And if you use this new version of Firefox with Twitter, you can type a #hashtag or @username directly into the address bar to go right to a search results page (try #idol) or someone’s profile page (like @nba). Simple.

And then there are photos. While this feature isn’t live just yet, in the “next several weeks” you’ll be able to upload a photo attached to a tweet right from twitter.com. This will work on the mobile clients as well, obviously.

Yesterday, we speculated that Twitter would be using Amazon to host these photos rather than putting them on their own servers. Instead, they’re partnering with Photobucket to host these photos. Interesting.

Twitter also says that they’re working with mobile carriers around the world to add MMS capabilities for simple picture attachment as well.

No word on the planned iOS 5 integration for Twitter, but that was to be expected. No way Twitter is allowed to announce that before Apple does at WWDC next week.

It’s been over a year since we’ve last written about Photobucket, when the former News Corp. / MySpace property merged with Ontela.

Apparently, the Photobucket that came out of the merger didn’t technically have a chief executive at the helm, although CFO Tom Munro served as acting President. The company this morning announced that Munro has now been officially appointed CEO after an executive search was initiated by Steamboat Ventures, the Disney-affiliated venture capital firm backing Photobucket.

Prior to Photobucket and Ontela, Munro was CFO of Vallent, a $70 million software company that was acquired by IBM in 2007. Before Vallent, he served as CFO of Quotesmith.com during their initial public offering.

Photobucket isn’t exactly the first site that springs to mind (not to mine, at least) when it comes to sharing photos and videos online, but the company claims it’s still one of the leaders in this space.

The company claims over 100 million registered members upload over four million images and videos per day via the Web and their smartphones or connected digital cameras.

Earlier this month, Photobucket announced that it has inked a deal with T-Mobile USA to incorporate automatic photo and video upload functionality in the pre-installed Photobucket Mobile Application on the T-Mobile G2.

Photobucket-owned image hosting service Tinypic just killed off its service to all international users. According to reports, users in countries other than US, UK, Canada and Australia are now seeing the above message.

From what we’re seeing on various blogs, users both restricted and unrestricted are unhappy about the move calling for a Tinypic boycott, suggesting alternate services such as imgur as well as figuring out a work around way to get access to previously uploaded photos.

From our tipster:

“We just lost access to over 6,500 images that users were posting to our forum (19,000+ members)… all of them international users (spanish speaking).. Argh.. Those images are no longer viewable to them.”

We’ve contacted Tinypic for more info and will update this post when they respond.

Update: While no one from Tinypic or parent company Photobucket has responded to our emails, another tipster reports that Tinypic is mysteriously back up for Spanish and possibly other users:

“People are Tweeting the same thing … Did Tinypic change their minds? Are they going to roll out a plan this time hopefully altering everyone in advance; like they should have in the first place.”

We’ve just sent another request for info and will keep updating as we hear more news.

Ontela, a mobile photo upload and storage service, is backed by Disney’s Steamboat Ventures, among others.

Steamboat Ventures is said to be putting $40 million or more in additional capital into Ontela. Most of that will go to News Corp., valuing Photobucket at $60 million, say multiple sources. A portion of the new funding will go into the merged entity.

MySpace acquired Photobucket back in 2007 for $250 million, plus a $50 million earnout. This new deal marks that valuation down by almost 83%.

MySpace won’t answer queries about this story (in fact, they seem to have cut us off completely after this slightly critical story last week). Ontela keeps sending us to voicemail.

Photobucket has grown steadily since the acquisition, and currently brings in 54 million worldwide users each month (Comscore). But MySpace never integrated with Photobucket, keeping their own separate photo and video platforms.

It’s been little more than a side show ever since the acquisition, and the founders have left to do other projects. With News Corp. scrambling to fix up its digital division, it’s no wonder Photobucket has been on the chopping block.

Best of all, the deal will bring in new cash to News Corp.

It’s not clear that the final terms have been worked out. But our source tells us that News Corp. will sell a majority stake in Photobucket, retaining some equity. If Ontela is the buyer, the merged company will take a new round of financing, with most of the cash going to News Corp., and part of it going into the new company.

Presumably this deal won’t look much different from eBay’s spinoff of StumbleUpon earlier this year, except on a larger scale. News Corp. gets a cash injection and retains a portion of Photobucket. And the service, combined with Ontela or another buyer, gets a new start.

Ontela didn’t return a request for comment. MySpace isn’t answering their phones or email. Everyone is being very quiet about the deal in general, in fact. We’ll update as we learn more.

Update: more details here.

Photobucket attracted 53 million worldwide visitors in June (Comscore worldwide) and remains one of the most popular photo hosting sites on the Internet. The site first launched six years ago.

The two aren’t commenting on the timing of their exit or what they plan to do next. The earnout on the acquisition ended in May 2009, and it isn’t unusual for founders to leave once the acquisition has been fully paid out. Given their history, I’m sure they’ll be starting something new shortly.

Shutterfly, an online photo sharing and printing site, is adding video capability to its photo sharing sites. Shutterfly is using video hosting site Motionbox to power its video sharing service. So when you upload a video to your Shutterfly Share site, it will also be stored in your Motionbox account. If you upload to Motionbox directly, you will be given the option to post your video to your Shutterfly Share site.

Users can also share videos to social networking sites including Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Blogger can upgrade for unlimited video storage and HD-quality playback. The free account is a little limiting for storage—you can only upload ten video clips. For $30 per year, you can have a premium subscription which allows higher file size limits, unlimited video downloads and HD-quality playback.

I’m assuming that Shutterfly will monetize the addition of videos by offering customized DVDs of clips. Currently, the company offers users a variety or printing services where users can not only print their photos, but also create cards, mugs, invitations, apparel and more with photos emblazoned on each item. But I’m not sure how else Shutterfly can make money off of the video component.

Shutterfly, which IPO’d in 2006, is playing catch up to other more popular photo sharing sites, like Flickr and Photobucket, which both host video as well as photos. Even Facebook is becoming the go-to destination to share photos and videos. But Shutterfly, a vestige of the dot-com boom and bust, has managed to survive, despite being in an ultra competitive space that’s chock full of similar offerings and products.

PhotoBucket, the FIM-owned photo sharing goliath that sees over 25 million monthly uniques, is taking aim at becoming the dominant photo sharing service on Twitter. The company has quietly launched TwitGoo, a media-sharing service designed from the ground up to be Twitter-friendly, allowing users to share photos with only a few clicks (and movies are on the way).

PhotoBucket used to be one of the small guys, coming from nowhere in 2006 to emerge as one of the Internet’s largest photo providers. Much of its initial growth was driven by its ability to thrive on a popular social site – in this case it was MySpace, which previously didn’t have many easy options for embedding photos. Now the tables have turned, as TwitPic has come from a similarly unknown position to become the leader in sharing photos on Twitter. Traffic may still be relatively modest compared to more orthodox photo sharing sites, but with Twitter poised to become a mainstream phenomenon, media sharing is going to take off fast. PhotoBucket competitor Imageshack launched its own service in February. And now PhotoBucket wants a piece.

TwitPic is the dominant player in this space with over 1 million users, but the one-man operation is having trouble coping with its rapid growth – an issue that will likely become even more of a problem as Twitter becomes more mainstream. Conversely, TwitGoo is built on the same infrastructure that powers PhotoBucket and its sister site TinyPic, which means that it should have no problem coping with a massive influx of new users.

TwitGoo’s other advantage is that it will likely be perceived as more friendly to brands than startup services like TwitPic. At this point this isn’t much of an issue, but as more brands begin to embrace Twitter and create their own applications that tap into the service’s API, they’re going to want to direct any media-sharing functionality through a trusted service. PhotoBucket and its parent company FIM have already built relationships with these brands. And the site also screens content for obscenity – something that no small-time operation can do effectively.

The service itself will be familiar to anyone who has used TwitPic or any of its competitors. Users sign in to TwitGoo with their Twitter credentials and then upload a photo to generate a URL shortcode, which they can then Tweet directly from the service’s web interface. The site tries to maintain the look and feel of the native Twitter interface, importing user backgrounds and consistently placing links where you’d expect them. And in the not-so-uncommon event of Twitter downtime, the service features a backlog queue, which allows desktop clients and other API users to queue their submissions for when the Twitter system comes back up.

Of course, one of the things that has made TwitPic so popular is that it is integrated into many Twitter clients, including favorites like TweetDeck and Tweetie on the iPhone. TwitGoo is on very few of them, though it is hoping to catch up on this front quickly and is launching with a full API. The service is also in discussions with a number of major Twitter clients, though it can’t discuss specifics yet. This is really where the battle will be won or lost – on Twitter it doesn’t matter how nice your infrastructure is unless its third party clients support your service.

Photo-sharing on the Web keeps getting more popular as people transfer more of their digital photos from their the black holes of their computer hard drives to social networks where their friends and family can actually see them. Although Facebook Photos has emerged as the largest photo-sharing service in terms of users and is one of the fastest-growing of any size, it is still not the largest by the sheer number of images that it stores.

That honor, for the moment, goes to ImageShack, which currently hosts 20 billion images, I’ve confirmed with the company (for more background on ImageShack, read this post). Facebook holds 15 billion photos, according to a spokesperson there. But it should catch up by the end of the year. Facebook users are adding photos at a rate of 850 million photos a month, compared to 100 million photos a month by ImageShack users. Good thing Facebook just fixed its storage architecture to be able to handle the bigger load. Clarification: The numbers used in this post are for unique images. Facebook actually has 60 billion image files because it stores each image in four different sizes. But it stores 15 billion unique photos. The 20 billion Imageshack figure is also for unique images but ImageShack founder Jack Levin says that it is an estimate and there could be 10 percent duplication. The Flickr and Multiply numbers below I’ve also confirmed are unique numbers.

After Facebook and ImageShack, the third largest image warehouse on the Web appears to be News Corp’s PhotoBucket, with 7.2 billion photos. And then Yahoo’s Flickr comes in at 3.4 billion, which also includes some videos. Interestingly, coming in right behind Flickr in the photo count is social network Multiply, with 3 billion images. Multiply’s photo=sharing options are one of its main strengths, which make sit attractive to its core demographic of families and moms (an area where Facebook is still struggling). Picasa is probably up there somewhere, but Google won’t get any more specific than “billions” of photos have been uploaded “and millions of photos are uploaded every day.”

In fact, with the exception of Photobucket, none of these services publicly discloses its latest image count. I had to ask each company individually. Some companies like Shutterfly refuse to disclose their numbers, and they are a publicly traded company. I am still waiting to hear back from Kodak about KodakGallery..com, but the trend lines of these older photo storage services are not encouraging (see second chart at the bottom of the post). Below are the figures I was able to collect directly from each company:

Image Warehouses On The Web (numbers are total images stored)

ImageShack: 20 billion
Facebook: 15 billion
PhotoBucket: 7.2 billion
Flickr 3.4 billion
Multiply: 3 billion
Picasa “billions” (?)

While Google chose to be vague, Yahoo was completely transparent. It provided the following additional stats on Flickr:

Photos/videos uploaded daily: 3 million (implies 90 million a month)
Photos that are public: 50%
Photos that are tagged: 30%
Geo-tagged photos: 110 million
Number of unique tags: 38 million
Amount of traffic that comes from search engines: 75%

And Multiply shared with me the fact that its 12.5 million registered users are uploading an impressive 75 million photos a month. That comes to six photos per day per registered user, which is actually more than Facebook. Since Multiply encourages high-resolution uploads, it is handling 2.5 terabytes per day in image uploads. A little under one percent of its users, or 10,000 of them pay $20 a year for premium services such as unlimited storage and photo album backups. The one percent of premium users accounts for between 5 and 7 percent of all uploads.

If you look at comScore numbers, however, it is clear that Facebook is gaining the most usage overall, with 161 million unique visitors worldwide in February. Flickr is a distant but strong second with 76.5 million visitors. Photobucket is at 58.6 million uniques, Picasa is at 39.9 million, and ImageShack is at 33.2 million.

Understatement of the day: Apps are in. Having already released an iPhone app, it should come as no surprise that Photobucket has teamed up with T-Mobile and Danger to create mobile Photobucket apps for select T-Mo handsets and Danger’s Sidekick.

More specifically, Photobucket worked with T-Mobile to create an exclusive mobile photo/video service “that enables users to send photos directly from mobile handsets to several destinations: a Photobucket album, a PC hard drive, or any an email address.”

Initially, the app (both free and premium versions) will be available on T-Mobile’s BlackBerry Curve, BlackBerry Pearl, and three select (unnamed) WinMo handsets. According to the press release:

Following the 21-day trial, users can continue using the free version or purchase the full software for a special holiday one-time purchase price of $19.99. The expired trial version allows users to upload only to Photobucket, while the premium version gives users access to Photobucket, as well as the ability to send photos to their home PC or to any email address.

As for Sidekick owners, Photobucket partnered with Danger to develop an app specifically for everyone’s favorite hiptop (screenshots below). The app allows users to upload photos and videos directly to a Photobucket album from their Sidekick where they can add/edit titles, descriptions and tags, and even rotate and/or resize their images.

In addition, users can:

• Create a Photobucket account
• Log into Photobucket to access their albums
• Browse and search images and videos on Photobucket
• Browse other users’ albums
• Share images

The Sidekick Photobucket app is available only on a subscription basis for $1.99/month.

If Facebook has one standout application it has to be Photos. Measured on its own, it is the largest photo site on the Web. A full 69 percent of Facebook’s monthly visitors worldwide either look at or upload photos, based on comScore data. And more than 10 billion photos have been uploaded to the site.

And it’s been pulling away from its competitors. As can be seen in the comScore chart above, as recently as last September the top three photo sites in the U.S. were running neck-and-neck, with Facebook Photos at 23.9 million unique visitors, followed by Photobucket at 21.3 million uniques, and Flickr at 19.5 million uniques. But by January, the number of monthly U.S. visitors going to Facebook Photos shot up 41 percent to 33.6 million. Meanwhile, Photobucket is up only 7 percent to 22.8 million, while Flickr is up 12 percent to 21.9 million. (Picasa is a distant fourth in the U.S. with 8.1 million).

In other words, Facebook increased the gap between its closest competitor (Photobucket in the U.S.) from 2.6 million monthly unique visitors to 10.8 million. On a worldwide basis, the gap between Facebook Photos and Flickr (which is the No. 2 site globally, and looks like it is about to pass Photobucket in the U.S.) went from 41.2 million unique monthly visitors in September to 87 million in December (the most recent data available, see chart below).

What accounts for Facebook’s advantage in the photo department? The biggest factor is simply that it is the default photo feature of the largest social network in the world. And of all the viral loops that Facebook benefits from, its Photos app might have the largest viral loop of all built into it. Whenever one of your friends tags a photo with your name, you get an email. This single feature turns a solitary chore—tagging and organizing photos—into a powerful form of communication that connects people through activities they’ve done in the past in an immediate, visual way. I would not be surprised if people click back through to Facebook from those photo notifications at a higher rate than from any other notification, including private messages.

But the tagging feature has been part of Facebook Photos for a long time. What happened in September to accelerate growth? That is when a Facebook redesign went into effect which added a Photos tab on everyone’s personal homepage.

(The chart above shows U.S. visitors through January. The chart below shows international visitors through December, with 153.3 million unique visitors for Facebook Photos, 66.7 million for Flickr, 45.5 million for Picasa and 42.7 million for Photobucket).

Fox Interactive Media is eliminating more than just free lunches. News Corp’s digital arm is trimming nearly 100 jobs across several business units, including Photobucket, MySpace, Scout Media, Rotten Tomatoes, and corporate. The total comes to a little under 5 percent of FIM’s domestic U.S. workforce, and about 3 percent of its global workforce of 2,900. We have added the amount to our Layoff Tracker.

Although MySpace employs 1,600 of those workers, a check with sources close to FIM suggests that the vast majority of job cuts (80 to 90 percent) are happening elsewhere. One of the hardest hit business units is Photobucket, where 22 people are losing their jobs. The corporate offices are also absorbing a substantial portion of the layoffs.

In an official statement, FIM acknowledges:

Several of the groups within FIM are eliminating some jobs and repurposing others. It is important to note that we continue to hire in many areas.

Separately, a spokesperson for MySpace notes that, on a net basis, MySpace plans on ending its fiscal year with more people than it currently employs. And other sources confirm that MySpace is still hiring in key positions such as business development, whereas the other FIM business units are not hiring as much or have actual hiring freezes.

Whenever people remember to use that camera on the back of their phone, what do they do with it? Do they go out into the wild and try to capture what Ansel Adams’ work would look like through a crappy VGA sensor? No. They go and take pictures of themselves with the bathroom mirror, or snap a shot of their drunken friends for later uploading and sharing. Recognizing this, Verizon has gone and removed a bit of the kludge from the process, teaming up with Photobucket.com to crank out an application for instant photo sharing from VZW handsets.

The application will set you back 3 bucks a month, and is available now through Verizon’s Get It Now catalog. Of course, you could always just use Photobucket’s long available mobile-to-email method and save a couple dollars a month, but I’m sure there are plenty of would-be uploaders out there who might be a bit mystified by anything but a purposed, spoon-fed application.

On the heels of a major upgrade earlier this week that added facial recognition and video-editing features to its Picasa photo management service, Google added a new Explore page today that shows off the most popular public photos uploaded by members. In addition to the featured photos, shown in a 3 X 4 grid, the Explore page also shows the most recent photos uploaded in a slide-show widget. Below, it offers a list of the most popular tags. For instance, here are pictures tagged “New York.”

The Picasa Explore page also has a Where In The World? game that is mashup opf geotagged photos and Google Maps. It shows you a photo and you have to guess where it was taken. If you guess wrong, it tells you how far off you are in kilometers. This is fun for outdoor photos, but when people upload geotagged photos of a generic apartment of a plate of food, it can become tricky.

It is not clear how Picasa chooses what photos to feature, but it is obviously borrowing from Flickr’s Explore page, which shows photos based on its on ‘interestingness” algorithm. I find Flickr’s photos much more interesting than Picasa’s (keep working on that algorithm, fellas). Flickr too has a map mashup that shows geotagged photos on a map (although, it is not a game).

By adding new ways to discover public photos, Picasa is taking on Flickr, Photobucket, and Facebook Photos in a more direct way. Globally, Picasa passed Photobucket in July with 48 million visitors compared to Photobucket’s 43 million, according to comScore. It still trails Facebook Photos (97 million unique visitors) and Flickr (63 million). In the U.S., it is much further behind, with only 8.3 million monthly visitors, compared to 18.3 million for Flickr, 23.5 million for Photobucket, and 25.4 million fopr Facebook Photos.

Photobucket, one of the web’s most visited sites and home to billions of photos, is introducing a new feature dubbed “Group Albums”. The feature will allow multiple friends to add their photos and videos to a shared album, which can be password protected and moderated by the Group’s owner. Group Albums aren’t currently active on the site – Photobucket expects to have them live by Wednesday morning.

Group Albums will support sharing via emailed invitations and RSS feeds, and will allow an album’s contents to be presented in a slideshow. Each album will have a maximum size of 1GB.

The feature will be handy for many Photobucket users, but it’s hardly novel. Similar features have been on social networking sites like Facebook for years.

Previously the API was released only to signed business development partners, and had limited functionality. Functionality includes log in via OAuth, album creation and editing, content uploading, content sharing via email, search and metadata access (tags, titles, descriptions, etc.).

Photobucket is also promoting third party services on their API, at gallery.photobucket.com.

Flickr has had an API available since late 2005, with hundreds of third party applications built on the base service.