I was recently sent an invitation for a free trial of phanfare.com by Lance from the now defunct Baddog Photo (Where’d you go Lance?). From my initial observations, it looks promising.

• No advertising on online albums
• Unlimited storage
• Universal access to your photos and videos from any computer
• Customer support from real people with 1-hour response time
• Faster uploads using Phanfare background uploading
• Support for photos and videos. Just drag from your camera and see them on the web!

What makes Phanfare interesting is the desktop application to help sync your photos. Pricing aside ($7/month), there’s a lot there to intrigue me. While I’m certainly a flickr fanatic, there are “quirks” with flickr that Phanfare has seemed to address. But then I think about the thousands of photos I have on flickr and quickly put aside the idea of switching.

This got me thinking about what it would take to switch. Phanfare offers a lot. But even with “a lot”, I still quickly dismiss the idea. While I admit to not thinking about the specifics much, I can’t really imagine what it would take me to switch right now. I’m so ingrained in my camera->Adobe Bridge->flickr routine, that it’s second nature (no comments on why I haven’t been uploading many photos lately!). Is flickr that much a part of my photographic hobby? And if it is, should it be?