AT&T and Yahoo! Launch Enhanced Online Photo Gallery

WebKnowHow
Monday, August 21, 2006; 02:36 AM

AT&T Inc., and Yahoo!, have released the new AT&T Yahoo! Photos, a web-based service designed to facilitate digital file photo sharing. Results from a survey commissioned by A&T reveal that the new features of AT&T Yahoo! Photos arrive at a time when digital photo users expect more from online photo services, including an easier way to share digital photos.

The upgrades to the new AT&T Yahoo! photo experience mirror the growing use of online photo services. According to InfoTrends, the total number of online photo service users is expected to grow from 55 million in 2004 to 83 million in 2009. And Nielsen/Net Ratings cites that 62.5 percent of Internet-connected U.S. households now have broadband, a factor that lends to more interactivity with online photos.

The new AT&T Yahoo! Photos offers desktop-like functionality in a web-based service, delivering new features such as photo-tagging, or labeling -- for easy viewing. It provides Smart Albums, or online ''playlists'' of photos that detect newly tagged photos and automatically recognize and add tagged photos to online albums. The service offers deeper integration with leading AT&T Yahoo! services, including e-mail and Instant Messenger (IM), among other options.

Users can also order professional-quality prints online for pickup at local stores, place ship-to-home orders, or order personalized photo gifts via the new service. The new AT&T Yahoo! Photos brings a Web 2.0 experience to AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet subscribers, featuring the next generation of web-based services and social media, designed to enable collaborative sharing online. The enhanced service brings tagging capabilities to the mass consumer audience, extending beyond the PC, to mobile devices (such as AT&T Yahoo! Go for Mobile).

Kieran Nolan, Vice President of AT&T Broadband explained, ''The new community-based photo features -- like photo-tagging -- foster user interaction in ways that weren't possible before for AT&T Yahoo! broadband customers. For example, as photo collections continue to grow, they can become more difficult to manage. With tagging, users can label photos -- their own and those shared with them -- making them easier to organize and find later. Features like these mean that customers can now exchange comments on shared pictures, add tags to help organize photos and rate them for simple searching.''

AT&T Yahoo! Photos functions much like a desktop application but offers the combination of remote access from any web-connected computer, with no software download required, which differs from other web-based services. Will Aldrich, Director of Yahoo! Photos added, ''AT&T Yahoo! Photos enables users to spend less time maintaining their photo collections and more time viewing and sharing them with family and friends. Whether they are online photo-sharing enthusiasts, or first-time digital photographers, next-generation capabilities like tagging, search and comments will change the way millions of AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet subscribers enjoy their pictures online.''

A new survey commissioned by AT&T provides feedback on using digital photos with online tools, ideas on digital ''photo personalities,'' ways to share and reasons why people like working with digital photos, among other topics. The AT and T survey revealed that currently more than one in five respondents already move their digital photos from a camera to their computer to enhance, edit and create their own visual content; however, eight in 10 (80 percent) of survey participants indicated that they would share digital photos with friends and family more often if they had the needed features, tools and know-how. When asked what they would do with online photos if they had additional skills, knowledge and tools, 74 percent of survey respondents aged 18 to 34 said they would save to an online album or create a personal Web site with their photos.

The AT&T survey results also revealed the following:

* Personal Paparazzi. Thirteen percent consider themselves to be people who take lots of self-portraits and then share the photos with everyone they can.
* Shoot and Run. Ten percent of respondents classified themselves as digital photographers who store their photos on a portable device, such as a digital music player or cell phone, and show them to friends and family on the go.
* Webmaster of Ceremonies. One in five respondents described themselves as people who not only take digital photos but also store them on a computer, create slide shows, post photos to web sites or make multimedia movies or DVDs to share their photos with friends and family.
* Lens Cappers. Less than one in five (17 percent) of survey participants classify themselves as people who take digital photos but usually leave them in the camera.
* Underexposed. Thirty-seven percent of those surveyed describe themselves as people who take digital photos and store them on their computers but don't share or know what to do with the pictures.

The new AT&T Yahoo! Photos is available beginning today and will continue to roll out in the coming weeks to AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet subscribers. AT& T Yahoo! High Speed Internet offers consumers a unique broadband experience, including virtually unlimited photo and e-mail storage, Instant Messenger with webcam capabilities, commercial-free Internet radio, and a suite of powerful online security tools. This survey was sponsored by AT&T to gather insights into how American consumers are taking advantage of digital photography today and where they want to go tomorrow.

The survey was conducted through the ORC Caravan, a nationwide telephone omnibus poll, from July 14 through July 17, 2006. Results for the AT&T Summer Photo survey are based on responses from 965 adults (from a total sample of 2,000 Americans) who have a digital camera. For this sample of 965, the margin of error because of sampling is less than plus or minus 3.1 percentage points at a 95 percent confidence interval for values at or near 50 percent.