Could SmugMug be an Alternative?

SmugMug is another photo sharing site and it looks like it’s gotten quite a bit better since I last looked at it a couple of years ago. Perhaps it could replace flickr.

I created a trial membership to see and the jury is mixed. It does provide an RSS feed of albums (or galleries in smugmugese) but the feed contains almost no info. Unlike Picasa Web Albums, the album doesn’t have a geotag or a date (other than the modification date for the album) associated with it. That makes it tough to automatically order albums chronologically. The album description also isn’t in the feed making it not terribly descriptive.

The image display on the site is interesting. There’s a fair amount of customization possible, but you can’t get a display of image, EXIF and map all in one view as you can with PWA. Overall, I’d give it a mixed review. It’s more expensive than either flickr or PWA but only gives me moderately more desired functionality compared to flickr and less than PWA. Of course, Google hasn’t responded to the multiple pleas for help regarding the name tagging problem many of us are experiencing on PWA so who knows if that will ever be fixed. It’s a problem that some have experienced for at least a month.

But, I digress, the question of the moment is could smugmug satisfy my needs. My initial reaction is no, but it’s a cool product and it’s worth considering if you’re in the market for a photo sharing site and want more options for display than either flickr or PWA offer.