Are you familiar with Flickr or Twitpic? Well, Panoramio is also a picture sharing website; except it is geolocation-oriented which means one can find images taken near a specific location around the world. Photos loaded on to Panoramio can be accessed as a layer in Google Earthand Google Maps, with new photos being added at the end of every month. Panoramio’s goal is to allow Google Earth users to learn more about a given area by viewing the photos that other users have taken at that place. Panoramio is available in all major international languages.

Benefits of Panoramio

The biggest advantage of Panoramio is that you can join a group of users who share in the same interests you do. Panoramio Groups allow for discussions about a topic you may feel enthusiastic about. “Wild animals in Africa”, “Traditional Dances”, “Portraits” or “cars” can be topics worth a discussion.

You can share your passions through photographs more collaboratively with Panoramio Groups. This new feature lets you create a sub-community within Panoramio around a topic you’re passionate about, so you can easily engage with like-minded photographers and hobbyists.

You may also use Panoramio groups to organise a Panomeeting and share the experiences and photos of the meeting with the world. You may also want to use Panoramio groups to organise a photo competition. The opportunities are many.

Only your imagination can decide what can be done with Panoramio groups.

To upload a photo, you’ll first need to be registered. If you haven’t registered yet, now is the time to sign up for Panoramio. Anybody with a Google account can join Panoramio and start sharing photos with the world immediately. Panoramio has an official iPhone application and third party developers have released a Windows Phone 7 version of Panoramio. This allows users to browse through the various images posted to www.panoramio.com

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