Check out my entire video interview with Trey Ratcliff, or continue reading below:

Ratcliff isn’t alone in his use of Google+. Photographers in particular have embraced the social network with enthusiasm, making use of the way it presents photos within news feeds and the integrated lightbox that makes it easy to browse entire galleries. This has led to not only grassroots-organized Google+ photo walks — meet ups of like-minded photographers who go out in the field and take photos together — but also a Google+ specific conference that is bringing amateur and professional photographers to San Francisco this week. “It’s exploded,” said conference organizer Scott Kelby about photographs flocking to Google+. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Google has obviously been paying attention to this. You only have to look to the recent revamp of the Google+ iOS app, which now puts a much bigger emphasis on photos, to see where things are going for Google+.

Flickr, MIT and Google+

Trey Ratcliff’s photos on Google+

One of the reasons photos are starting to play such a big role for Google+ is Bradley Horowitz, the VP of product management for the social network. Horowitz studied image recognition at the MIT Media Lab and built a visual-information retrieval company. He went on to work for Yahoo, where he met Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield of Flickr. The duo challenged his views on image processing when he told them about the problems computers have in making sense of photos, Horowitz recalled during a keynote on Tuesday morning, “They looked at me quizzically and said, ‘Why don’t you just ask people?’”

Horowitz described this simple question as a turning point for his career. Looking at the way Flickr used tags and other social features to organize information, he realized social engineering was much more capable than algorithms alone. “This field of social computing really lit up inside of me,” he said. Horowitz eventually oversaw the acquisition of Flickr through Yahoo, and at the time told me in a conversation that his goal was the Flickrization of the entire company.

Yahoo eventually decided to go down another route, and lately, people have been asking themselves how the company managed to kill Flickr – if not the site, then definitely the spirit of the service. Now it looks like Horowitz wants to bring some of that spirit to Google.

Google’s answer to Instagram

Of course, others are trying to leverage the inherent social nature of photography as well. Facebook’s users are uploading 250 million photos every day to the site, and yet it decided to spend a billion dollars for social photo-sharing service Instagram. Om made a good argument recently that this acquisition was all about mobile photo sharing, something that Facebook hasn’t been as good at.

And Google+? It has built photo sharing into the core of its mobile apps, allowing users to automatically upload each and every photo to the cloud. Presenting these photos better on your mobile, as it has done with the iOS app, is an important first step. But Horowitz already hinted at the next step on Tuesday: photo processing. “Today, the tools are too segmented,” he said, summing up the discrepancy between an Instagram filter and a full-blown app like Photoshop. “Either they are toys, or they are for the pro.” Google+ has some rudimentary online editing for photos built in, but Horowitz hinted at the possibility of extending these much further.

Making sense of all of your sensors

Another challenge is making sense of all the photos that are uploaded every day. The instant upload functionality of the Google+ mobile apps makes no distinction between your best shots and those your phone unknowingly takes in your pocket. Horowitz said that eventually, services should take into account all kinds of sensual information to figure out which photos matter most — including the fact that our heart jumps when we shoot something that really touches us. “I’m constantly giving signal that is lost, that could be captured to find those moments that are meaningful, that are special,” he said.

Horowitz prefaced these remarks by saying that this isn’t about concrete Google projects but about ways he would personally improve photography. But then he assured his audience, “We have the tools at Google to deal with this information overload problem.”

Cameras that measure your heart rate to tell Google which photos matter — that may sound like science fiction. But so did an idea like Google’s Project Glass just a few months ago. If anything it’s clear Google is taking photos very seriously. And photographers like Ratcliff embracing Google+ could be a first sign of this strategy starting to pay off.

Image of SLR camera courtesy of Flickr user BotheredByBees

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Trey Ratcliff, creator of 100 Cameras and I

Of all the apps on my iPhone, the ones that get most attention for me involve photos — from the built-in Camera app to Camera+ to photo filter apps such as Noir, ColorBlast and Hipstamatic. But it is photo-sharing network, Instagram that has become the center of my “photo” universe.

All photos taken and modified on my iPhone almost always end up on Instagram, where I share them with others. Nevertheless, it is not an easy process. I take photos, process them, save them and then have to import them into the Instagram app. I have often wondered why we couldn’t just simply export to Instagram or export from Instagram into other apps.

Click to enlarge

Today, half of that wish came true, when Trey Ratcliff, a computer programmer turned photographer emailed to let me know that his 100 Cameras in 1 iPhone/iPad photo app can now export photos manipulated by his app directly to Instagram. 100 Cameras and 1 is a photo filter software that allows you to add more effects to your photos.

This makes 100 Cameras in 1 the first app ever to be integrated with Instagram. It already allows you to share photos via email, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, SmugMug, and DropBox, as I mentioned in my review of the app from earlier this year.

From Instagram’s perspective, this is a good move. The company had announced an API in February and since then a raft of new apps have come up to capitalize on it. While filters might have jumpstarted Instagram, the company which already has over 4 million subscribers, has to focus on its core value proposition – community and the social interactions around unique visual experiences.

I hope Instagram allows more apps to export directly to its network. By opening itself up to other apps and services, it has the potential to slowly become the hub of our mobile photo experiences. And in the end, that’s is what would make Instagram so much more valuable and in the process become the Flickr of mobile photos.

Here is a video interview with Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom.

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Trey Ratcliff, creator of 100 Cameras and I

The Oscars are over, but we will all be talking about the winners — and the losers — for days and weeks to come. Why? Because we love movies. We love movie stars. What’s not to love? They have the drama, the glamour, the shiny bright lights and, not to mention, fantastic amounts of money. No wonder everyone wants to be like them!

And while not everyone gets to be Angelina Jolie or even Jesse Eisenberg, we can pretend that we are living inside a movie. Today we have easy and free access to platforms that help spread the word about the movies of our lives — quickly. The Internet makes easy work of distribution.

The concept of “followers” and “subscribers” is another way of saying “audience,” and by sharing carefully crafted words, a handful of shared links and artistically snapped photos and videos, what we’re doing is essentially performing for this audience. We are all Lady Gaga — be it for one person, or a million people.

Strange? Trey Ratcliff, a celebrated photographer, author and creator of one of the top-selling iPhone apps, 100 Cameras and I, doesn’t think so, pointing to the photo slide show at the top of our Facebook page as a signpost of a society that’s making its own movie reels.

I Want My MeTV

Before I met Ratcliff, I always thought millions of us were living inside our own weird version of reality television. But reality television can be ugly and sometimes too stark. Movies are curated, edited and have a sense of polish. That is one of the main reasons why Ratcliff believes apps like his and Hisptamatic are selling briskly on the iTunes store.  “The filters can turn ordinary into extraordinary,” Ratcliff said.

To Trey’s point, many of the photos I take are actually pretty mundane, but thanks to filters, they become magical. The picture of clouds that’s as flat as a week-old bottle of Pellegrino takes on a wistful look just by adding a filter. The 8MM app can turn a clip of a boring, sleepy tech conference into a scene out of a 1970s Bollywood movie.

These tools add a certain mystique and drama to these photos and our lives, making them look more interesting, more like movies. It’s perhaps one of the main reasons why we’ve seen Facebook quickly become the greatest repository of photos — memories, if you may — on the web. “Not everyone can write, draw or paint, but everyone can press a button,” said Ratcliff.

Platforms, Platforms, Platforms

I don’t think we should be surprised at all by these developments; it’s part of the bigger cultural shift. In our 21st-century society, we all want to stand out and get attention. Narcissistic? Perhaps, but we’re living in this century and defining the ethos for the new Internet-connected age as we go along.

I’m not a philosopher, so I’ll live these heavier matters to people with a higher intelligence quotient. What I can tell you is that the technology companies that benefit from these big trends are those who provide platforms for sharing our lives.

SixApart’s MoveableType, Flickr and Blogger were early proponents of sharing, but they never really got to realize their full potential because they grew up in an era limited by relatively low broadband penetration and lack of mobility-driven computing.

Subsequent platforms — YouTube, WordPress (see disclosure) and Tumblr — have had more success, thanks to faster, cheaper broadband connections. Twitter and Facebook are the big winners of this sharing.

The emergence and growing popularity of San Francisco-based Instagr.am (over three million signees since its launch last year) is yet another sign that in the end, this cultural shift benefits the platform providers.

Next time you are thinking about building a product, evaluating a company or just wondering why early adopters are so crazy about Instagr.am or Quora, keep in mind we’re playing a role in a movie: edited, directed and starring us.

App of the day:

The Internet Wishlist. My app of the day isn’t really an app. Instead, it’s a website that’s a collective list of apps and websites the Internet people are wishing for. It will take you less than five minutes to scan this website, which collates masterful and moronic ideas all in the same place. You should follow its creator, Amrit Richmond on Twitter. (Via Laughing Squid.)

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Disclosure: Automattic, maker of WordPress.com, is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. I am also a venture partner at True.