When Google trademarked the Photovine name, it sparked talk about a new photo-sharing service from the company. What would it look like, how would it work? As more and more of these types of platforms emerge in the mobile market, the space for an innovative and creative function gets smaller and smaller. And when the Photovine site went live yesterday, Google revealed little more than the fact that it would exist via smartphone and contain a social element. No surprise there.
Today the site is shrouded in slightly less mystery and includes an invite request icon as well as a teaser trailer. It’s all still very basic and as vague as can be, but it seems like keywords are how shared photos will be connected. Starting a vine, labeling it and pushing it live sends it out to the world (remember, Photovine is “uber public”). The next person would take a picture that would fall under the same heading, and so on and so forth, creating a vine effect. Seeing how others interpret “warm and fuzzy” or “good morning!” is where the novelty lies.
Given its name and the little information gleaned from the site yesterday, none of this is extremely revealing. What the video more than anything provides is a glimpse at what Photovine will look like. Interestingly enough, the video shows iPhone 4 users versus Android. But it appears to be a relatively simple UI and displays images in a grid format.
According to the Photovine team, invites will slowly roll out later this month.
