HP Cuts Deal For Web Printing With Facebook App, Flickr, Others

Seeking to gain traction in its "Print 2.0" strategy for web-based printing solutions, Hewlett-Packard Wednesday said it had cut deals to deliver its technology to several social networking and entertainment web sites.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based campany said it was launching new "relationships" with Disney.com, Windows Live Spaces, Flickr and the Graffiti Application for Facebook. HP has been working to build a web-based printing business since earlier this year, when it bought the Cambridge, Mass.-based startup Tabblo, and believes it can grow the total market for printed pages by improving web printing.

In Wednesday's announcement, HP is positioning itself to cash in on the flood of interest around Web 2.0 social networking. For example, the Graffiti Application for Facebook allows users to draw custom messages and images on a Facebook page, and almost 8 million Facebook users have signed up for that functionality. HP said its actions will deliver Tabblo technology to provide higher-quality prints of Facebook Graffiti images. HP said its Snapfish service had been successful enough in an earlier integration with Microsoft's Live Spaces service that it would deliver Tabblo to provide a "blog printing" service for the platform.

In the service to be delivered to Disney.com, HP said it would enable fans of wildly popular Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus - - youth singing and acting sensations for Disney - - to combine personal photos with images of the stars to create a personalized "MyConcert Memory Book."

While Wednesday's announcements had a consumer focus, HP has said the overall strategy it is deploying could have implications for its commercial solution provider channel.

In early rollouts and descriptions of its strategy, HP executives said its solution providers could benefit by both the expansion of total printed pages better web printing would provide, as well as delivery of Tabblo and web-printing solutions to clients seeking to add the functionality to their own web sites.