Group photo sharing site ZangZing, which Mike has written extensively about, has launched in private beta today and is giving out beta invites to 250 TechCrunch readers. Those clamoring for one can sign up for early access here.
Unlike Flickr and Facebook, ZangZing is focused on sharing photos in groups, where “every album is a group album.” “The state of photo sharing on the web feels like it’s stuck in the dark ages,” said co-founder Joseph Ansanelli.
Indeed ZangZing is a cut above other offerings, users have a streamlined homepage where they can view all the photo albums they have either created or Liked, with the options to share albums on Facebook and Twitter.
Users can create an album by clicking on “Create” in the bottom left and invite other people to become album Contributors. Contributors can email photos to an album from their phone and computer, as well as use the photo uploader to add photos to ZangZing from their desktop or from their smartphone. The service also offers Instagram, Facebook, Flickr, Kodak Gallery, Picasa Web, Shutterfly, Photobucket and SmugMug integration.
Each group on ZingZang has granular privacy settings where users can set their sharing preferences or allow individual password protection on each group. Each group is either Public, Hidden (accessible only through a link), or Password Protected.
ZangZing is free of advertising and is extremely focused on the user browsing experience, beautifully displaying photos at high resolution in a large and fast loading slideshow format. The company, which is currently bootstrapped at $1.5 million in funding, plans on monetizing through a freemium model, offering extra storage and other features to power users.