In a land where entrepreneurs are struggling desperately to integrate location into the worldwide photo-sharing phenomenon, Albumatic may have swooped in just in time.
Ventures like Color and others have tried and failed, and not for lack of funding, to let users enjoy location-based events by sharing photos with each other around that specific event. However, it turns out that sharing photos with strangers, whether you find yourself in the same location or not, doesn’t attract users as much as you’d think.
It’s not the photo-sharing that stops people, but more the “location” bit. Even Highlight, which has nothing to do with photos per se, hasn’t taken off as expected due to the fact that location has very little to do with relevance when it comes to social.
Albumatic takes a new approach, by letting users close-by join Albums and add to them, while users far away can join to watch, but not add. This gives a little more control to the user, and also allows people who aren’t right there next to you still enjoy the photo-sharing process.
Albumatic is in the process of raising $4.5 million in funding, according to a recent SEC filing.
All in all, it’s unclear if people really want or need a service like that, especially alongside our many media-sharing apps like Instagram, Vine, etc. However, if there is a demand for location-based photo-sharing, Albumatic seems to have it figured out.
Two flies.