Online photo sharing to categories of people

[ozaz]

I have not yet really got into online photo sharing, but I want to do so soon.

What I would like is a service that allows me to define groups of people (e.g. friends, parents, family, work colleagues etc). Every time I create an album in the service, I want to then assign that album to one or more groups (e.g. friends + family group) so that only people I have in those groups will get notified that I have just uploaded a new album for them to view and people who are only in other groups (e.g. co-workers will not get notified and will not be able to see the album when they visit my page on the site).

From what I understand about Google+ (which is very little), this is conceptually similar to the way it operates. But I also think I am right in saying that people will need to join google+ in order to receive updates when I publish new content. I do not want this.

Are there photo sharing websites which operate in the way I have described that do not require visitors to join the site or join a social network?

[Laird Knox]

Short answer, no.

If you want people to be notified then they have to "join" the site in some fashion. This might be as simple as providing an email address. Once you get over that hurdle then there are several options.

Personally I didn't like any of the services available so I wrote my own, but that has many more pitfalls.

[Designer Dale]

Sounds like Apples Photo Stream in iCloud. Here's a link:

http://www.apple.com/icloud/features/photo-stream.html

Dale