Kodak brings social photo app to Android

Kodak has launched an Android version of a mobile app that lets users create ad hoc social networks to share their photos.

The company first brought the app out for iPhone users in November. Kodak quietly rolled out the Android version last week and is announcing the new service today.

"Our customers, no matter what platform they are operating on, can access their photos and share their photos," said Mark Cook, vice president of products at Kodak Gallery, the old Ofoto business that Kodak acquired a decade ago.

Users can set up temporary networks to share pictures, creating one, for example, at a wedding, where members can post photos taken with their mobile devices. Then, they can add other wedding-goers to the network, giving them access to upload and view snaps from the event.

Defining networks by specific events has the advantage of giving users access only to the pictures that matter to them. Those wedding-goers won't have access, for example, to pictures shared by parents of a kid's baseball team, or photos collected from a high school reunion, even if the people who shot them were at the same wedding.

The iPhone version of Kodak Gallery has been downloaded nearly 500,000 times since its debut, Cook said. And more than 5 million photos have been uploaded from the mobile app, with an average of 50 photos per album.

The app lets users share their snaps by email, text and on Facebook. They can get push notifications when photos and comments are added to their albums. And uploaded pictures can be turned into prints, cards, and photo books, products from which Kodak ultimately hopes to make money from the app.

The new Android app works on Android phones as well as Amazon's Kindle Fire, which runs the mobile operating system. The app is available for free from both the Android store and Amazon's Appstore for Android.

Cook said that Kodak has no current plans to make the app available for Blackberry or Windows Phone devices.