Can OpenPhoto unbundle the photo industry?

Yesterday (June 20) I heard about OpenPhoto, a project to build an open-source photo storage and sharing service currently looking for funding on Kickstarter.

Love for a couple of reasons:

The unbundled photo industry

I’ve had a vision for an unbundled photography industry for awhile (first wrote about it in October 2008, followed up in June 2009). The vision was / is pretty simple: an open-source platform to allow photographers to create and own their distribution platforms, with the role of the photo agencies separated to focus on market-making. If OpenPhoto works, then it opens up a range of opportunities in the rest of the stack for innovative companies in the photography industry. OpenPhoto is the base for a variety of meta-layers to be built. Just like WordPress.

Funding from the crowd

OpenPhoto is yet another example of people finding funding for potential businesses from the crowd (first written about in this letter in March, shared here to the public in April). Whether you find funding from customers, VCs, or a wide range of other options, there’s never been a better time for people from all over the world to connect over shared interests to find, build, support, and fund new ideas.

Whether OpenPhoto finds funding or unbundles the photo industry is yet to be seen, but it’s yet another signal of where innovation is trending. Now let’s see what the market says. Rock on, Jaisen.

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Updated: Featured on TechCrunch today.