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Phanfare gives up on social networking

Andrew Erlichson thought fans of his premium photo sharing site Phanfare would embrace social networking features like instant updates to friends whenever new pictures were posted, or news feeds about their pictures

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Instead, his base of over 11,000 paying customers voted a resounding "no."

They wanted their old Phanfare back.

So Thursday, Phanfare goes "back to our roots," as pure photo sharing, says Erlichson. Phanfare users will once again be able to showcase their work with personalized URLs (such as http://jeff.phanfare.com) to share albums, with optional passwords instead of pesky registrations and notifications.

The social networking features are still there -- if wanted -- "but we don't expect for them to be used much," nor will they promoted, says Erlichson.

Phanfare competes with Smugmug for folks who want their photos presented online sans ads, in a more pleasing layout than at sites that exist just to sell prints.

Mighty Smugmug -- which serves consumers and pro photographers as a place to also sell prints -- has over 100,000 paying customers. Phanfare has a little more than 11,000 subscribers, mostly folks with their first digital SLR who who are photo enthusiasts.

So in a bid to increase market share, Phanfare began last year offering a free service, with storage of up to 1 gigabyte of photos -- hoping users would love the service so much they would sign up for the upgrade.

It didn¹t happen.

So now Phanfare is lowering its prices, to $49.99 yearly from $54.99 and heavily touting its acclaimed free iPhone app.  It lets you tap into your entire Phanfare photo library on your phone, even if offline (such as when you're on an airplane).

Erlichson says he added social networking features before Facebook really took off, and that in the interim, he's learned that social networking is a "natural monopoly. You want to join a network where all your friends are, so the biggest one continues to get bigger."  Phanfare fans can still share their pictures instantly to Facebook and Twitter, he says, so there was no need to have social features on Phanfare.

By Jefferson Graham

Photo: Phanfare's new home page.