Image Bookmarking Overload
Digital Trails of Eye Candy
Image bookmarking sites have kind of trailed off as a hot trend, despite their lasting appeal. The ability to post, rate and share images with contacts and friends lets users learn about a happily obese spectrum of artistic styles, photographic methods, and all things visual arts.
As a junkie for eye candy, I'm always trying to tap new veins of inspiration. This is a list of 17 image bookmarking sites and social networks with a nod towards visual art / design.
The best known is probably FFFFOUND. While it is invite only, you can still publicly browse users' picks and fulfill your insatiable appetite for visual goodness. A minimal layout and wide variety of images, from elegant design to doodles. An image's individual page lists other photos you might like based on who liked the original pic. Commenting, however, isn't an option.
FFFFound is great because it sources the pictures on the home page—giving you the ability to follow links to your heart's content and discover countless blogs, designers and photographers.
Typeish is wonderfully minimal, with click-thrus either directly to the image or to its source. You can filter images out by tag.
Centerology has a philosophy posted on their site that reads: "Being a centerologist is more than bookmarking images, it is way of communicating through your findings. It is about following your own sense of aesthetics, while observing and respecting that of others." A very clean design.
Another minimal, simple image bookmarking site. Looks like they have a surplus of wacky animated gifs from internet memes and phenomena, but maybe that is just this week's bounty. Users have the option to make their bookmarks private.
Branded as the Social {pic} Collective, this is a site similar to FFFFound, but it doesn't clickthru to the image's source. Rather, clicking on an image displays it full-size and displays some additional info. You can sort images by popularity and tags. Open registration.
We Heart It is another very popular site that allows comments on images, but you have to click-thru to see where the image originated from. A clean design, and very simple to use. Seems fashion oriented rather than design, but has a pretty wide selection nonetheless.
Their tagline reads "Photoree is to photos what Last.fm is to music and StumbleUpon is to websites." Their "rate up" system sounds reminiscent of Pandora as well, as their algorithms figure out your preferences based on the choices of users and group behavior.
This site sources thru to images on the home page, allows comments, and provides their own Firefox plugin to make it easy to add images from anywhere on the web. As users are allowed to upload nude or otherwise line-treading artwork, they have a simple to use safe filter.
They also allow you to list images based on popularity and category.
An online fashion popularity contest, where those baggy pant things are the new nu-rave are the new tight pants. Regardless of the pretension flowing from your monitor when you visit this place, it's still great to look at the lengths people will go to "express themselves." It's kind of like Vice's Dos and Don'ts, but serious and without profane, cynical captions and the occasional unbelievably disgusting photo that makes you want to take 5 showers in a row.
Oobject is "somewhere between a blog and a directory." Their tagline is "Like Billboard charts for gadgets."
They curate images and post them in categories, usually focusing on tech gadgets and design as it relates to them. Users then vote on their selections. Categories include things like "inflatable military decoys."
ImgFave is "the easiest way to save images that you find online." Yet another minimal, simple image bookmarking site. Users can view thumbnails or full images, making it easy to browse quickly.
Photagr is based on De.licio.us and allows users to view popular photos in a navigation bar similar to digg, so you can see the most popular images within a chosen timeframe.
Image Spark "helps you collect, discover, share, tag and converge images that inspire you and your work."
They came up with the idea of a "MoodBoard," where users can upload and share images that surround a theme or carry a certain aesthetic posture. Very refined, clean design and free uploading tools.
A social networking site for the art world. They have a "Gallery" section and an "Images" section, where you can browse photographs and artworks from all kinds of contemporary scenes. Not much innovation as far as image bookmarking going on here, but you can favorite images.
Hey, let's all buy macro lenses for our SLRs and take snapshots of this incredibly beautiful curry we're about to ingest. Then we'll make the image link thru to a recipe we found somewhere on the internet that says to grind up part of a wooden chair and add it to broccoli stems to make the best curry on the planet.
Seriously though this site will make you hungry.
Fotki is for users looking for a place to upload image galleries/videos and share them, rather than a strict bookmarking site. Users can upload videos, edit profiles, and write 'journals.' It's got a ton of features, an international group of patrons, and photo competitions.
Similar to Flickr, except this allows paying users to sell images and set up co-branding: which allows you to display and sell images through your own domain by integrating your Fotki content into another site.
Woophy stands for World Of Photography. They say on their site that "the goal of Woophy's founders is to create an accessible, visual, current, democratic and collective work of art comprised of a database picturing our remarkable world."
Using a map is the most suitable way to display geodata of shared images, and they are not short on content from almost everywhere on the globe. I hope they stick around.
it is that nice
I ought to also mention DeviantArt. While a bit overwhelming and not even close to always 'deviant,' this can serve as a great resource for ideas and inspiration.
Also, I just came through It's That Nice. No option to submit just yet, but their collection is astounding.
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This is a very thorough list. I've bookmarked this page. Thank you.
There's new one on market
http://dropular.net/
ffffound clone under wordpress and vnovember.com theme - meetdesigners.com - focun on interior design