I think you're right that duplicate detection is not a commonly-desired feature among photography enthusiasts. They generally upload a small set of carefully-chosen and edited photos, so duplicates will be uncommon.
For people with large collections of their memories, I think it's more common. That's why Snapjoy launched with duplicate detection as part of their MVP. My site (OurDoings) got compliments from a new user on several features, but duplicate detection was apparently the only feature that was capslock-worthy:
duplicate detection. EXCELLENT! Not encountered elsewhere and what a difference it makes, it means that people can dump their stuff even though they havent quite optimised/tagged/cleaned up their local stuff. It detected both duplicates in the file sets I sent (it happens with multiple computers, synchronisation, and multiple aborted organisation efforts) and when i sent files already uploaded. Removes a lot of work :)
For people with large collections of their memories, I think it's more common. That's why Snapjoy launched with duplicate detection as part of their MVP. My site (OurDoings) got compliments from a new user on several features, but duplicate detection was apparently the only feature that was capslock-worthy:
duplicate detection. EXCELLENT! Not encountered elsewhere and what a difference it makes, it means that people can dump their stuff even though they havent quite optimised/tagged/cleaned up their local stuff. It detected both duplicates in the file sets I sent (it happens with multiple computers, synchronisation, and multiple aborted organisation efforts) and when i sent files already uploaded. Removes a lot of work :)