Ripe, low-hanging fruit — How news sites can make dynamic photo galleries that rock

Photos rule on the Web.

Don’t tell the print reporters (although they probably know due to the whole, “if you get a photo with your story it’s more likely to get on the front page” theory) but if you watch Web traffic, you can clearly see that visuals exponentially control traffic.

Unfortunately, most newspapers drag their feet on optimizing their photos for readers to enjoy quickly and easily. Throw in tagging that allows photo galleries to be dynamically generated or reader-submitted images and you can really heat up your servers.

Want to build a custom solution?

• Quit twiddling your thumbs and get your programmers to work!
• Hire Chris Vannoy or some other young journerdist. Vannoy just implemented a photo database solution using pieces of open-source software at LoHud.com.

Want a turn-key, hosted, third-party solution?

I wouldn’t say any of these are exactly ‘turn-key’ solutions but they do offer proven results at other news organizations:

• Text America (News biz example: St. Pete Times)
• Spotted (News biz example: Bluffton Today)
• Buzznet (News biz example: Ventura County Star)

While each vendor provides a different flavored solution, they all reasonably work and there have to be more Web2.0-ey companies looking to jump into this venture if your company will throw money at them.

Want a nice Flash slideshow app for cheap?

• SlideShowPro ($20) is an awesome Flash-based, XML slideshow application. It has great depth, customizability and preloads images (great for creating slideshows that can be viewed quickly, not so great for inflating pageviews though). Paired with Director ($20) a great AJAX-powered gallery administration tool for SlideShowPro.
• Soundslides ($39.95) is very cool too but more for multimedia stories though… which isn’t exactly what we’re talking about here. (I’m sure you’ve heard of how cool Soundslides is though.)

Want to be lazy but at least do something?

• Ask readers to tag their Flickr photos with your keyword and build a custom Flickr badge to showcase them on your site. (This probably won’t really net massive traffic but is a way to get readers interested and involved in the visuals on your site.)

In competitive markets like Chicago, there’s already battles between independent sites like Chicagoist and the Chi Town Daily News to get readers with Flickr accounts tagging their photos with “chitowndailynews” or “chicagoist” for the site’s badge feeds. (Chicagoist is winning the battle by more than 13,500 entries, if you were wondering).

So, no more excuses. Newspapers, I’m looking at you.

Visuals are consistent and proven traffic on the Web. One ‘local pets’ reader gallery will net massive traffic, ask any site that’s tried it [now how much 'journalistic' value that poses... is another discussion altogether ]. Anyway…

Get to work!

UPDATE (10/8):
Monoslideshow is a new $19.95 Flash slideshow app for the folks that can’t get enough of the “Ken Burns” effect. I’m downloading it now..