My Eyes have seen Los Ojos

I have a closet filled with colored pieces of paper that I used to call snapshots.  They were taken over three-fourths of a lifetime and include memories of loved ones when they were young, wore clothing and hairstyles that now make us smile.  We are seated a dinner tables and gathered in front of my fireplace.  There are many a beaming baby photos of people who have babies of their own.

Trouble is that over a lifetime, I was a terrible record keeper.  We didn't name our photo envelopes, not slight clue as to where we were and occasionally, I'm baffled by someone in a photo who I obviously was close to at the time it was snapped. If you ask me to show you that photo I took of you at our July 4th Party in 2002, I won't be able to find it.  I'll need that rainy day when I have vowed to organize and label the photos for over 30 years.  Te rainy day never came. Someday after I'm gone, I imagine my wife's two daughter's will sit down together and each pick 20-30 as keepsakes.  The remainder are likely to wind up in Silicon Valley landfill.

A couple of years ago, I switched to digital photos to solve all this.  Taking pictures became cheaper and easier, so Paula and I took more of them.  We now have a collection of about 1200 shots taken of places we've gone and family gatherings we've attended and social events we've attended. They're stored in this computer and my old P4 Sony, which is in turn stored in my closet along with the old paper photos. There are also a few at Ofoto and a few more at Flikr. But finding my photos is no easier.  Instead of being stored in envelopes and boxes in my closet, they now gather dust in digital vaults, where I still can't find pictures of my grandaughter Samantha and show you how fast she's grown in five years.  How her smile stays the same and how her body language is starting to look like my wife's. That's because labeling the damned photos is necessary for me to find what I want, just like it was in the quaint old days of film. All the services for sorting and sharing photos, still require you to tag each photo and tagging is boring.

That's why I'm wild about Ojos("Ojos" means eyes in Spanish, but the name will probably change). This new company that has hired me for a small consulting gig.  They automate the process of tagging.  Tell Ojos that the face in this picture is cute little Samantha, and Ojos then knows Samantha, every time it sees her.  In fact Ojos can search by just about any object or surface in a digital photo, then go out and give me all the shots of Samantha, or Hawaii or whatever.  It is a technology with an amazing amount of secret sauce, that is not quite ready for general consumption.

I really like the Munjal Shah, the co-founder, who started blogging last week and is getting better every time he posts.  I like him most because he's interested in breaking new ground rather than following tried and true "best practices."

Yesterday, I saw early alpha of the Ojos technology.  I've been hearing about it for nearly a month, but seeing something like this makes a great deal of a difference. I think their technology is not just cool but important.  There's still enough of the traditional marketer left inside of me to still be apprehensive about talking about a product that's not quite ready for prime time, but Hell, this one is already getting notice.   Rob Hof, just posted a great piece about them on BusinessWeek online Ho John Lee also takes a look at them and wonders whether Ojos is sufficiently robust to stand alone as a product or service.

With all due respect, to Ho John, If the Ojos tech crew can deliver what they believe they are about to deliver, their stuff is not only sufficient to stand alone.  It's sufficient to disrupt the current incumbent services.

This is a small gig for me--let me disclose the terms: I get $2K a month and my focus is to advise them on word of mouth strategies.  Since I expect to be writing a good deal about Ojos over the next several months, and I want to make clear it's because I think what they are doing is interesting and valuable.

Comments

[Jeremy Pepper]

It will be interesting. I have been following the online photography space for most of my career, and there seems to be a second coming of online photo services and sites right now. How this will all shake out will be interesting, but can the market sustain them all?

[Munjal Shah]

Jeremy - prior to flickr there was almost zero significant innovation in the photo space for five years (since really the birth of ofoto, shutterfly, snapfish). In that time the number of digital photos taken has gone from 1B to 300B and digital camera penetration has gone from very small numbers to over 50%. So in effect the market has grown dramatically. I estimate that the advent of 3MP camera phones will increase the number of photos taken a day to about 10 so 300B photos will become trillions. So yes I think there is space for many many photos sites.