Businesses as well as retail, education and other industry sectors have been reaping the benefits of kiosks and touch screen technology for years.

Printing pictures from touch screen kiosks is nothing new but now social media is being used to target consumers, to follow the trends of a digital era.

Customers can print off photos directly from their Facebook account by using Socially Connected KODAK Picture Kiosks.

The kiosks have been deployed throughout Target stores alongside the new Kodak launched Social Photo Album Creator app for Facebook, the first Facebook application of its kind to come from a major imaging brand.

It gives users the ability to create a collaborative photo album with friends on Facebook.

FACEBOOK APPLICATION

Rolando Martinez, Eastman Kodak Company ‘s Retail Systems Solutions Americas business manager, said: “Today, pictures on Facebook are only fleeting glimpses of an event, but now with our new app consumers can tell their stories collaboratively, which leverages the real strength of Facebook.

“The new platform aligns with how consumers share photos socially and takes photo sharing from ‘my photos’ to ‘Our photos.’ The new app is perfect for shared life events such as weddings, parties or reunions.”

HOW IT WORKS

The consumer creates an album from their current Facebook photos, invites friends and family to collaborate and add their pictures to the album and can then visit a Kodak picture kiosk to connect and print from their Facebook account at the Kiosk.

So what is next for kiosks

; printing from micro-blogging site Twitter or printing pictures from social media site MySpace?

We’ve seen several efforts recently to bring Facebook photos into the offline world, such as HotPrints’ free, advert-supported albums. Now bringing such capabilities to brick-and-mortar stores comes a new initiative from Kodak that lets consumers print online photos from Facebook and Picasa using in-store kiosks.

Starting this summer, users will be able to access their web albums on Facebook and Picasa as well as Kodak’s own Kodak Gallery service. The kiosks will make 4x6in (102x152mm) prints of the photos, provided the resolution is high enough to make a quality print. Kodak says it also intends to connect with other social networking sites around the globe.

Given that more than 3 billion photos are uploaded to Facebook alone each month, there are plenty of opportunities for forging OFF=ON connections for consumers whose memories increasingly reside in the virtual world.

Kiosks – constantly making people’s life simpler eh?