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2pad: Anti-social Photo-sharing Innovation

2pad is an Israeli photo & video-sharing startup that offers a somewhat unique take on the traditional features that define online photo sites. See their guided tour here.

The primary difference is that 2pad assumes that you don’t want to share your photos or videos with anyone - they are private until you explicitly invite someone (from your 2pad contacts or via email) to see specific media or galleries that you give them permission to view. Its directly contrary to what one expects from a photo-sharing service in this day of social everything; to those used to Flickr’s freewheeling sharing/searching/licensing, it may seem retrograde, but I’m willing to bet that there’s a decent-sized group of Hartwellian photographers and social neophytes out there that would find 2pad’s privacy defaults comforting.

While the site itself offers the gamut of ordinary photo tools (sign up, galleries, uploads, etc.), most basic transactions are funneled through email. For example, adding a photo to your account is as simple as emailing 2pad@2pad.com. Your attached image is added to your account, the subject is taken to be a gallery designation, and the any body text in your email is taken to be a description of the photo. Its simple and elegant - and more or less identical to Flickr’s equivalent feature.

Here’s an email that I sent 2pad:

And here’s good ol’ “Blue Hills” in my 2pad account:

If you don’t have a 2pad account, your first email will get you a reply with a link to follow. When you do so, you’ll start at a gallery page featuring the first photo that you attached to your first email, and an introductory video. After you skip through the video, you’ll be prompted to select a password, and then you’re done.

2pad also apparently has a business plan. Free accounts start with a usable amount of storage, though video addicts will find it very cramped, and its very expensive and limited compared to Flickr Pro.

So - in a nutshell, it seems like a solid me-too entry, and the streamlined email-based usage model and restrictive default privacy settings will no doubt appeal to nervous-about-the-social neophyte niches. Overall though, 2pad doesn’t differentiate enough to justify its steep price premiums.

2pad, flickr photos

4 Responses to “2pad: Anti-social Photo-sharing Innovation”

naomi | December 19th, 2007 at 4:51 am

You are right! There are those of us out here who don’t want to share everything. why would I post images of my children for anyone to see? Please check out the youtube video “Everyone knows your name.” I rest my case.

http://youtube.com/watch?V=howpgf1soqm
Sven | January 22nd, 2008 at 1:49 pm

They do sure differentiate themselves — with their offensive SPAM campaign. They were barely live when I got spam from them in my email box. MASSIVE thumbs-down on this kind unscrupulous invasion of people’s privacy for advertising an overpriced me-too.

(Search for them on YouTube and note phrases like “Sex Interview” and “Advice Theft” in the titles of their advertising spammage.)
Rod | January 25th, 2008 at 2:00 am

Sven - can you point to the spammed search results on YOutube? I searched and just found interviews with the 2pad crew, and a bunch of random stuff bought up by keyword overlap.

http://youtube.com/results?search_query=2pad&search=Search

As for your spam experience, sorry to hear it.

Naomi - thanks for stopping by and sharing the link - unfortunately I got a youtube error when clicking on it. Can you re-post?
Susi | March 5th, 2008 at 5:58 am

Hi all,
It has been brought to my attention that Sven has been advertising us as a “Spam Company”. I would like to comment that is it simply not the case. 2pad is a service, created to encourage online privacy for users.

I apologize to Sven if he has been harassed by someone other than the 2pad team.

Regards,
Susi