Do people want to print photos? Wasn't there an article a couple years ago about how Flickr was making less than $1k per year on people clicking the "Order prints" button?
Ask a simple question, get a simple answer: yes. Many of my (female, older) relatives use synthetic pigment attached to plant matter with animal proteins as both their primary transfer mechanism and storage media for photos. Ruriko's mother and my mother got virtually instant Dropboxed/Facebooked photos from the wedding, cooed a bit, and then went head over heels when they got the "real" photos. (Not the professional photos, which will be delivered in data and print -- just the same friends' cameraphone/point-n-click candid shots printed out at Walgreen's for $6.23.)
If true (and I'll assume it is) this is just a basic conversion-funnel problem. If your funnel looks like this:
- user takes photo on their iPhone
- user successfully learns of Flickr's existence
- user successfully opens Flickr account
- user successfully uploads photo to Flickr
- user successfully navigates to Flickr, sees photo
- user decides to order prints
- user finds and navigates "order prints" workflow
- user gets prints in the mail three days later
...your conversion rate is one number. If your funnel looks like this:
- user takes photo on their iPhone
- user decides they like photo and want a print
- user goes to local store which has sold photo prints for 30 years
- user hands camera and $5 to store employee
- user receives prints ten minutes later
your conversion rate is a completely different number, and it would not be surprising to learn that number B is orders of magnitude different from number A.
I think people would be far more interested in being able to get a print of their photos in an hour (although there's no reason for it to take remotely that long), than in being able to get them after several days.
Ask a simple question, get a simple answer: yes. Many of my (female, older) relatives use synthetic pigment attached to plant matter with animal proteins as both their primary transfer mechanism and storage media for photos. Ruriko's mother and my mother got virtually instant Dropboxed/Facebooked photos from the wedding, cooed a bit, and then went head over heels when they got the "real" photos. (Not the professional photos, which will be delivered in data and print -- just the same friends' cameraphone/point-n-click candid shots printed out at Walgreen's for $6.23.)