Do people want to print photos? Wasn't there an article a couple years ago about how Flickr was making less than $1k per year on people clicking the "Order prints" button?
Ask a simple question, get a simple answer: yes. Many of my (female, older) relatives use synthetic pigment attached to plant matter with animal proteins as both their primary transfer mechanism and storage media for photos. Ruriko's mother and my mother got virtually instant Dropboxed/Facebooked photos from the wedding, cooed a bit, and then went head over heels when they got the "real" photos. (Not the professional photos, which will be delivered in data and print -- just the same friends' cameraphone/point-n-click candid shots printed out at Walgreen's for $6.23.)
If true (and I'll assume it is) this is just a basic conversion-funnel problem. If your funnel looks like this:
- user takes photo on their iPhone
- user successfully learns of Flickr's existence
- user successfully opens Flickr account
- user successfully uploads photo to Flickr
- user successfully navigates to Flickr, sees photo
- user decides to order prints
- user finds and navigates "order prints" workflow
- user gets prints in the mail three days later
...your conversion rate is one number. If your funnel looks like this:
- user takes photo on their iPhone
- user decides they like photo and want a print
- user goes to local store which has sold photo prints for 30 years
- user hands camera and $5 to store employee
- user receives prints ten minutes later
your conversion rate is a completely different number, and it would not be surprising to learn that number B is orders of magnitude different from number A.
I think people would be far more interested in being able to get a print of their photos in an hour (although there's no reason for it to take remotely that long), than in being able to get them after several days.
Wondering why Walgreen's (or CVS, or fill in your favorite store here) didn't do this already on their own. An app that allows you to scan the camera roll, select pics, then upload to their machines for printing... seems obvious.
Is this more feasible because the pics are already mirrored on kicksend's servers, saving upload time?
Because doing an app well is hard. It's much much easier to wait until someone like Kicksend establish themselves, then give them some money and have them integrate.
And then there's the marketing: Walgreens would peddle the app to people who are in the store and thinking about printing digital photos. A Kicksend user might never set foot in Walgreens, but if he knows about the feature in the app (it's pretty discoverable), he might decide to print a few photos to stick on the empty wall next to his desk.
I believe this has almost nothing to do with servers and upload time etc.
People, naturally, don't tend to download some app to print their photos. In fact, people are not inclined to print photos. So there's an app which people actually use every day, it partners with a service provider to sell a service and get commission out of it.
There are examples like Song Pop game gives you to opportunity buy the music you guessed from iTunes. There's an affiliate problem of iTunes for that. Because Apple (iTunes) itself won't be implementing a game to increase sales.
Here, the point is, people won't print their photos every day. But people will take photos every day. So if I would download Walgreen app and can't find anything to print at a moment, I'll forget to use and print it when I take a picture with Instagram. So if I would see a print button integrated in Instagram, it will dramatically increase sales.
I thought a Dropbox to (Walgreens/Sam's/Walmart/Target/etc.) app would have popped up by now. Right click on a pic, select send to your store, pick up an hour later. Maybe not.
After 2 (maybe 3) print jobs from different Walgreens, I will never use them again. Get are among the worst in printing, colors were so bad that my own inkject seem better.
What you really need is a version of Redbox that takes your phone, scours it for photos, and prints them for you. It remembers which photos it's printed, so you don't get duplicates between visits. Heck, might as well have it pull credit card info, too.
Walgreens (and others) already have kiosks like this. Haven't used them, so not sure if it's only for raw USB storage or they speak PTP (which most phones seem to have).
[+] [-] jes5199|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patio11|13 years ago|reply
Ask a simple question, get a simple answer: yes. Many of my (female, older) relatives use synthetic pigment attached to plant matter with animal proteins as both their primary transfer mechanism and storage media for photos. Ruriko's mother and my mother got virtually instant Dropboxed/Facebooked photos from the wedding, cooed a bit, and then went head over heels when they got the "real" photos. (Not the professional photos, which will be delivered in data and print -- just the same friends' cameraphone/point-n-click candid shots printed out at Walgreen's for $6.23.)
[+] [-] mechanical_fish|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PStamatiou|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mistercow|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mgkimsal|13 years ago|reply
Is this more feasible because the pics are already mirrored on kicksend's servers, saving upload time?
[+] [-] mseebach|13 years ago|reply
And then there's the marketing: Walgreens would peddle the app to people who are in the store and thinking about printing digital photos. A Kicksend user might never set foot in Walgreens, but if he knows about the feature in the app (it's pretty discoverable), he might decide to print a few photos to stick on the empty wall next to his desk.
[+] [-] alpb|13 years ago|reply
People, naturally, don't tend to download some app to print their photos. In fact, people are not inclined to print photos. So there's an app which people actually use every day, it partners with a service provider to sell a service and get commission out of it.
There are examples like Song Pop game gives you to opportunity buy the music you guessed from iTunes. There's an affiliate problem of iTunes for that. Because Apple (iTunes) itself won't be implementing a game to increase sales.
Here, the point is, people won't print their photos every day. But people will take photos every day. So if I would download Walgreen app and can't find anything to print at a moment, I'll forget to use and print it when I take a picture with Instagram. So if I would see a print button integrated in Instagram, it will dramatically increase sales.
[+] [-] kuinak|13 years ago|reply
http://news.walgreens.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=561...
[+] [-] joe_bleau|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fuzzythinker|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mhunter|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] samstave|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] javajosh|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ConstantineXVI|13 years ago|reply