Facebook is giving prime real estate to images on profiles and pages—and it seems they’re not the only ones in the social media world paying attention to the increasing importance of pics. Edwin Philogene of Digital Lab recently blogged about two up-and-coming photo sharing platforms, Instagram and Picplz.

Largely based in their smartphone apps, the sites allow users to easily tag photos taken with their phone and share them on other social media sites, like Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare. Users can also comment on other users’ photo streams as well as “follow” other users. Photographers are able to “style” their photos using filters that give the images effects like black and white, high contrast, or (on Picplz) a 1970s style.

Edwin envisions brands incorporating photo sharing sites more and more into the social media strategy mix: awareness campaigns, photo-based scavenger hunts, customer engagement promotions, etc.

Do you see a place for photo-sharing sites in social media strategy?