Social photo albums come to Photobucket with Group share

Perhaps in anticipation of MySpace's Data Availability, where users will be able to seamlessly share their MySpace information with partner sites, Photobucket has announced its own "open" feature: community albums.

Called Group Albums, Photobucket will allow multiple users (from two to "thousands") equal access to a single album's photo and video content, which can be password protected. Each of these free albums comes with 1 GB of storage and has the option to be centrally moderated by an administrator who approves or denies submitted content. Users are otherwise left in charge of posting, editing, and deleting their own photos and videos.

MySpace announced its forthcoming Data Availability last week and included Photobucket in the list of partners. The ability for MySpace user data to be integrated into a Group Album opens additional opportunity there. By utilizing friend lists into the arrangement of a particular album, a moderator could automatically grant access to certain friends; or by having access to user's profile data, photos could be enriched by tags pertaining to the interests of people in the photograph instead of the user-assigned names. These are, of course, just potential applications of the data which have not actually been announced yet.

Photobucket is expected to open the Group Album feature on May 14.