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Yahoo! and AT&T's New Online Photo Service - AT&T Yahoo! Photos

Yahoo! and AT&T say they have launched a new project called AT&T Yahoo! Photos, a web-based service designed to facilitate digital file photo sharing. Results from an A&T's survey show that the new features of AT&T Yahoo! Photos arrive at a time when digital photo users want more from online photo services, including an easier way to share digital photos.

The upgrades to the new AT&T Yahoo! photo experience mirror the growing use of online photo services. As InfoTrends says, the total number of online photo service users is expected to grow from 55 million in 2004 to 83 million in 2009. And Nielsen/Net Ratings cites that 62.5 % of Internet-connected U.S. households now have broadband, a factor that lends to more interactivity with online photos.

The new AT&T Yahoo! Photos service offers desktop-like functionality in a web-based service, bringing new features such as photo-tagging, or labeling - for easy viewing. It provides Smart Albums, or online ''playlists'' of photos that detect newly tagged photos and automatically recognize and add tagged photos to online albums. The service offers deeper integration with most important AT&T Yahoo! services, including e-mail and Instant Messenger, among other options. Customers can also order professional-quality prints online for pickup at local stores, place ship-to-home orders, or order personalized photo gifts via the new service. The new AT&T Yahoo! Photos brings a Web 2.0 experience to AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet subscribers, featuring the next generation of web-based services and social media, designed to enable collaborative sharing online. The enhanced service brings tagging capabilities to the mass consumer audience, extending beyond the PC, to mobile devices, for example, AT&T Yahoo! Go for Mobile.

AT&T Yahoo! Photos functions much like a desktop application but offers the combination of remote access from any web-connected computer, with no software download required, which differs from other web-based services. A new survey commissioned by AT&T provides feedback on using digital photos with online tools, ideas on digital ''photo personalities',' ways to share and reasons why people like working with digital photos, among other topics. The AT and T survey says that currently more than one in five respondents already move their digital photos from a camera to their computer to enhance, edit and create their own visual content; however, eight in 10 (80 percent) of survey participants indicated that they would share digital photos with friends and family more often if they had the needed features, tools and know-how. When asked what they would do with online photos if they had additional skills, knowledge and tools, 74 percent of survey respondents aged 18 to 34 said they would save to an online album or create a personal Web site with their photos.

The AT&T survey results also shows the following:
* Personal Paparazzi. Thirteen percent consider themselves to be people who take lots of self-portraits and then share the photos with everyone they can.
* Shoot and Run. Ten percent of respondents classified themselves as digital photographers who store their photos on a portable device, such as a digital music player or cell phone, and show them to friends and family on the go.
* Webmaster of Ceremonies. One in five respondents described themselves as people who not only take digital photos but also store them on a computer, create slide shows, post photos to web sites or make multimedia movies or DVDs to share their photos with friends and family.
* Lens Cappers. Less than one in five (17 percent) of survey participants classify themselves as people who take digital photos but usually leave them in the camera.
* Underexposed. Thirty-seven percent of those surveyed describe themselves as people who take digital photos and store them on their computers but don't share or know what to do with the pictures.



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