Sharing Photos and Maintaining Privacy with Posterous

When I was contacted to see whether I'd help spread the word about how families can use Posterous to privately share family photos this summer, it was an easy decision to make. I had just finished using Posterous for the first time and had been really happy with how it worked out. It's easy to say "yes" when you know you can give a product your unbiased recommendation.

The end of the school year is always an emotional time, and this year was no different - with Everest moving up to first grade, there's just no way I can convince myself that he is a baby anymore. Darya finished her first full year of Pre-school, a year that brought her out of her big brother's shadow and helped her find her own interests and friends. I have so many wonderful memories from this year, from class parties, field trips and class plays to everyday moments like circle time.

There's always a flurry of activity at the end of the year with parents sharing pictures from the year. It's always tricky business - there are so many electronic ways to share images, and yet the options are sometimes confusing. Try as I might, Facebook's ever changing privacy settings continue to mystify me - my rule of thumb is not to post anything there that I'm not comfortable having visible to the world. That doesn't prevent me from sharing my own family photos there, but not everyone is as cavalier as I am about having images of their children floating around on the Internet and I've always been careful not to post images of someone else's kids. It's important to respect each family's sense of privacy.

In past years, some parents have burned CDs for everyone, other times a teacher has gathered images from parents and then printed them or shared them in a slideshow. Those herculean efforts often netted only a few new pictures because they required so much effort from so many people (most of all, the person gathering the photos, but also the parents contributing photos at the busiest time of the school year.)

This year, my husband (our resident software geek) proposed using Posterous to share pictures in both Everest's and Darya's classes. In each class, he set up a Posterous group open only to the parents and teachers. As the final few days approached, there was a flurry of activity with parents emailing the photos that had been languishing on their cell phones and cameras to the Posterous group. It was so easy to do that we ended up with more photos than in past years. I so loved getting each of those posts in email and knowing that they'll live on the Posterous group throughout my kids Elementary school years. N

So what does this have to do with family travel? If you're taking a family trip this year, Posterous would be a great way to share the pictures privately, just amongst the members of your family. You can share them on the go - sending updates directly from your cell phone or email, or you can edit them to your heart's content before making them available to other family members. The pictures will live on the Posterous website, safely hidden from anyone who you haven't given access to view them.

This post was sponsored by Posterous who asked me to help spread the word about their product. Posterous did not ask me to express any particular opinion, and as always my opinions are my own.

5 comments | Posted on June 27, 2011 | Save to del.icio.us

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