Tech Shout!

Online photo sharing site Photobucket has introduced a new photo tagging feature that offers users the ability to share tagged and linked photos across social networks and the Web. This new feature enables users to tag up to 20 names and links within a single photo, before sharing them online on personal profile pages, blogs and other sites.

Further, when tagged photos are displayed on Photobucket, embedded onto other sites, or shared by email, viewers will be able to see the tags, click on links and also find more images with the same tags on Photobucket.

Now, if one were to embed tagged photos on other Web sites, the tagged link travels with the photo, making it dynamic. Yet another unique aspect of Photobucket’s new photo tagging feature is the ability to create an instant photo sharing community by importing email contacts from the user’s own account. Moreover, if friends are tagged in a photo, they will immediately receive an email from the Photobucket user in concern, notifying them that they have been tagged in a photo.

The introduction of photo tagging on Photobucket also enhances the site’s search capabilities as well as on the Internet. Combines with existing photo titles and descriptions, the links and labels in tags make it easier to search Photobucket’s huge collection of user-generated images.

According to Alex Welch, president of Photobucket, “Our users enjoy spending time on the site, and we’ve always focused on making digital media sharing easy and fun. Tagging is a way for them to tell the story behind all their shots, so it’s actually a great new way to communicate with photos. Photobucket was the first Web site to allow users to embed digital media on social networking sites, and the introduction of tagging with embedded links takes Web photo sharing to a whole new level.”

Besides the introduction of the new photo tagging feature, Photobucket will also be rolling out some other enhancements that include:

enhanced titles and descriptions for all media stored on the site

support for high-resolution photos for Photobucket Pro users

new slideshow styles and themes designed by Flektor

the ability to link any Photobucket album to the owner’s MySpace profile