Lifeblob has launched new version of the site (our earlier coverage), and the photo sharing site emphasizes more on exploration now.

The new release has couple of interesting features, like

• When you import pictures (from Flickr/Picasa) and start tagging people and places, LifeBlob will present the related context around your pictures.
• Time Relevance – LifeBlob brings a sense of time relevance to your photograph and build connections automatically. For example, if you attend an annual conference that started in 2007, this year, your photos will have dates of the current year but the overall relevance of the conference spans the period 2007 – 2009.
  Lifeblob detects time relevance of your photos and presents it as a date range and other words that are indirectly related to your photo.
  This provides an interesting way to skip across time and discover content that is connected with the photo that you just added.
• Usability – The earlier version had too many dark colors/AJAX interaction and the new release, by all means has a far better UI (read: white).

The photo exploration market is overcrowded and very few ‘successful’ business models have emerged – for instance HP announced partnerships to bring photo-books, couple of companies (like clustershot) have turned into marketplace (buy/sell photos) etc and of course, there is a real time story built around pictures (like dailybooth) that lets you upload/share pictures with others.

It’d be interesting to see how Lifeblob monetizes it’s content.

Do give the new look a spin and share your comments.

Tags: lifeblob