Thumbq Launches Simple Image Hosting

By Sid Yadav    October 24th, 2006

ThumbqKailash Nadh, creator of boastMachine, Commentful, and Newzpile, launched a new image hosting solution recently called Thumbq. I try my hardest not to cover ‘yet-another’ services, but I was fairly impressed by what Thumbq has to offer.

The focus behind Thumbq is to be a quick, simple, and dirty solution to getting your images uploaded and hosted (therefore the tagline ‘at least makes some sense’). You select a bunch of images (up to 10), or just one, and hit upload. The only rule is that the file size shouldn’t exceed 5MB (compared to ImageShack’s tiny 1.5MB, that’s pretty good). Seconds later, they’re uploaded, and your presented with a master page filled with all the codes, links, and thumbnails you’ll ever need. Here are some random images I uploaded.

Where Thumbq goes further, though, is with a gallery view of your uploaded set of images (here’s mine) and even a slide show with some neat transitions. Note that the service is completely free to use, and since no registration is required you’re given with an unlimited quota. There are some benefits to register, though, such as the ability to track and view statistics of your images, add captions, and create sets of collections.

To be honest, I like it. It’s far easier to use than PhotoBucket, ImageShack and Flickr — the current market leaders — and it has a simple goal supported by a simple interface. As we know already, this space is big. The use of such a service extends everywhere from MySpace to forums, blogs, and messageboards. Literally, hundreds of thousands of images are uploaded each day.

Thumbq has a huge problem ahead, though, which is in getting people to actually use the service. The service is truly excellent, but the image hosting space is too fixated. Users who use, say, ImageShack, are in no mood of switching. They don’t need to: they’re happy with ImageShack, it works, and everybody else uses it. For them to be influenced into switching, the service will have to either solve a different problem all together or be a huge advancement: a simpler interface and some features aren’t going to cut it.

Thumbq Screenshot

[tags]Thumbq, Photo Sharing[/tags]

Most Commented

  • Actually Yoon they use iBox (which we developed, and gave away with an MIT open source license). Kailash is a friend of mine, and he has created a great little site.
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  • This person does not have a gratitude and I think is absolutely shameless. No reference or credits to the litebox javascript library on which it is based. Outrageous!
    If there is anything that they are providing, it is the hosting space. All the work is done by the litebox library.

    Yoon
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