PhotoShelter Friended Facebook

First the obvious: a lot of people use Facebook. Over 300 million people use the service, and it’s become the most popular social network. Irrespective about how you feel about Facebook, it’s impact is undeniable, and it’s ability to act as a marketing tool is becoming increasingly clear.

The business implication became clear to me last year when I posted an album of portraits, and then a “friend” hired me to photograph him. Posting images on Facebook is a way to passively market yourself to a qualified audience for free.

(I know, the terms and conditions are worrisome, but more on that in a second)

So I’m pleased to announce our new “Post to Facebook” feature that we released today. You might say to yourself, “well, duh!” And I would nod my head in agreement. It’s an obvious piece of functionality. But we’ve done it slightly differently than other implementations that I’ve seen.

From your PhotoShelter gallery, you can click the “send to social networks” link, and then use “Facebook Connect” to link your accounts. Then you have two options:

1. Post to your Wall: For those of you who don’t want to upload content to Facebook because of concerns over their T&C, you can post a link to your Wall with a message. Facebook will display a preview of a few images with a link back to your website. Here’s what a wall post looks like:

   

2. Upload Images: Alternately, you can actually upload images to Facebook from your gallery. We’ll create a new album with the same name as your PS Gallery, then upload the images. After the upload is complete, you get a chance to review the images and set the album permissions before posting them to your “Photos” tab. Just remember that Facebook has a 200 image limit per album.

Pretty nifty, huh? It’s a great time saver, and a cool way to go social.

Stay tuned, we have more cool features up our sleeves….