Tabblo debuted its photo-sharing web site Friday, positioning itself as a way to create professional-looking collages of photos using tools that allow users to drag and drop images, move them around the page, and add descriptions, with tools that mimic those available on a PC or Mac.

The software enables users to arrange their photos into specially designed layouts (or tableaux), design the look of the page, adjust the sizes and cropping of the images, and order prints and posters.

The Waltham, Massachusetts-based company is facing a crowded field in the photo-sharing space, with competitors like Yahoo Photos and Yahoo’s Flickr service, Google’s Picasa, Kodak’s EasyShare Gallery (formerly Ofoto), Webshots, Hewlett-Packard’s Snapfish, Sony’s ImageStation, and other startups like Photobucket and Shutterfly.

Tabblo CEO Antonio Rodriguez differentiates his site from the others by saying it will help users tell a story in pictures by giving them the ability to add free-floating text to their images in conjunction with magazine-like designs.

Magazine-like Spreads

“A good story requires good formatting and templates, so we spent a lot of time on developing a template engine that lets you start from something that’s been laid out by a professional art director and then be capable of being customized by you,” he said. “It retains the attributes of something that looks like a spread in a magazine.”

He wants the site to give users a more professional-looking way to display their images than they could get with a social networking site like MySpace.com, or a regular photo site that simply creates slide shows or grids of images.

“It’s like a mush between a good photo manager and a blogging tool in terms of letting you write live web pages with text and pictures and templates as opposed to a photo site,” said Mr. Rodriguez.

He is aiming for the kind of page layout functionality of software like Adobe Creative Suite and Apple iLife. Mr. Rodriguez, 32, previously worked as vice president of engineering at MyPublisher, where he used to produce Apple iPhoto books.

However, Tabblo will be facing plenty of competition.

“The space in general is very crowded,” said analyst Alan Bullock, associate director of InfoTrends’ Internet imaging trends service in Weymouth, Massachusetts. “There are a lot of sites popping up with community tools focused on sharing photos and videos, adding to Facebook and MySpace.”

While he has not examined Tabblo yet, he said the service sounded like it was taking an approach similar to the one recently adopted by Yahoo Photos, in moving to more of a web 2.0 feel and acting more like software than a web site (see Yahoo Upgrades Photo Site).

“If they’re truly adding some editing features and creative features for printing and publishing, that may set them apart from some of the community sites out there,” said Mr. Bullock. “But that will put them in competition with mainstream photo-sharing sites like Snapfish and Shutterfly. Those are big sites that are already established.”

Investing for Expansion

The company has been in development for a year and its site went into public beta testing May 15. The site has already attracted tens of thousands of users, thanks largely to flattering reviews. The company has about 10 employees.

Tabblo’s main investor is Matrix Partners, also based in Waltham. The company has done one round of financing with Matrix for an undisclosed amount. David Skok, a general partner at Matrix, sits on Tabblo’s board (see VCs Compare East to West).

Mr. Rodriguez plans to search for additional funding at the end of this year or the first quarter of next year. While he also wants to continue to receive funding from Matrix, he also hopes to find a VC firm who can help the company on the West Coast as well.

Mr. Rodriguez would like to see his company go public one day and is interested in seeing how the IPO announced Thursday by Shutterfly will go (see Shutterfly Plans $92M IPO).

“If Shutterfly has a successful IPO, which I think they should since they’ve built a good business over the last seven years, then they’ll pave the way for us,” said Mr. Rodriguez.

Partnering Plans

He plans to earn revenue for the site from selling posters and prints, but doesn’t intend to depend on web-based advertising. He also hopes to strike co-branding deals with camera makers that don’t have sites of their own.

Mr. Rodriguez is already in talks with several camera makers but doesn’t expect to announce any deals for at least nine months. He also hopes to strike partnership deals with cell phone companies and photo retailers, but acknowledges they are tough nuts to crack.

The Tabblo site already integrates with Yahoo’s Flickr service, enabling users to send photos from their camera phones to the site.

In about a month, Mr. Rodriguez plans to launch a way to email photos directly to Tabblo as well as send them via MMS (multimedia messaging service) from a camera phone. Users will be able to attach 100 photos to one email and have the system automatically create a Tabblo layout, or append a single photo to an MMS message.

He also intends to offer a way for Tabblo users to collaborate so they can easily create layouts and collages that include pictures from multiple users to document events like weddings, for example.

Another possibility that users have been requesting is the ability to integrate video from digital cameras and camcorders.

Contact the writer:MCohn@RedHerring.com