Why is Adobe getting into the group photo sharing game?

Adobe today announced the launch of GroupPix, an iPhone app that lets you and your friends create a shared photo album while you’re at an event. In other words, you now have yet another a group photo sharing app to try.

Right now, Color, Google+ Events’ “Party Mode”, Swirl, Pinweel, Cluster, Albumatic, Tracks, Yogile, Flock, CapsuleCam and even services like Flickr Groups occupy the group photo sharing space — that’s just what immediately comes to mind.

GroupPix is now available to try for free, but after exploring it ourselves, we found the app offered an unsurprising set of features and nothing else. It fails to stand out as anything spectacular or terrible.

So why on earth is Adobe getting into the game?

The only possible explanation we can find is that Revel, Adobe’s photo syncing and storing service which competes against Apple’s Photo Stream, led Adobe to the idea of mixing social into its existing photo hosting tech.

Revel is one of Adobe’s key attempts to establish consumer mind share on mobile devices. Adobe has long had creatives on lock down with its suite of apps, and on the desktop, Adobe has enjoyed dominance through Flash and Reader. On mobile, however, this is not the case.

Now, Adobe is exploring social to earn a place on your smartphone. We spoke with Adobe on the matter, however, and the company remained mum on the details — it essentially refused to detail its strategy and ambitions with this release. That makes today’s launch all the more confusing.

It’s as if GroupPix is just a peek at what the company is actually working on. Adobe vaguely confirmed this — the company says they will have more to share soon. That could mean absolutely nothing, but Adobe has lately proved it is not a company that just dabbles with new products: everything from its open standards push to its move to entirely embrace Creative Cloud shows that Adobe has firm strategies in place, and that it intends to follow through with them.

No, GroupPix doesn’t have legs right now, but Adobe has the ability to light a fire under it if it wants to. We’ll find out shortly if that’s what Adobe has planned.

➤ GroupPix for iPhone

Image credit: Thinkstock

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