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2pad: Anti-social Photo-sharing Innovation

2pad is an Israeli photo & video-sharing startup that offers a somewhat unique take on the traditional features that define online photo sites. See their guided tour here.

The primary difference is that 2pad assumes that you don’t want to share your photos or videos with anyone - they are private until you explicitly invite someone (from your 2pad contacts or via email) to see specific media or galleries that you give them permission to view. Its directly contrary to what one expects from a photo-sharing service in this day of social everything; to those used to Flickr’s freewheeling sharing/searching/licensing, it may seem retrograde, but I’m willing to bet that there’s a decent-sized group of Hartwellian photographers and social neophytes out there that would find 2pad’s privacy defaults comforting.

While the site itself offers the gamut of ordinary photo tools (sign up, galleries, uploads, etc.), most basic transactions are funneled through email. For example, adding a photo to your account is as simple as emailing 2pad@2pad.com. Your attached image is added to your account, the subject is taken to be a gallery designation, and the any body text in your email is taken to be a description of the photo. Its simple and elegant - and more or less identical to Flickr’s equivalent feature.

Here’s an email that I sent 2pad:

And here’s good ol’ “Blue Hills” in my 2pad account:

If you don’t have a 2pad account, your first email will get you a reply with a link to follow. When you do so, you’ll start at a gallery page featuring the first photo that you attached to your first email, and an introductory video. After you skip through the video, you’ll be prompted to select a password, and then you’re done.

2pad also apparently has a business plan. Free accounts start with a usable amount of storage, though video addicts will find it very cramped, and its very expensive and limited compared to Flickr Pro.

So - in a nutshell, it seems like a solid me-too entry, and the streamlined email-based usage model and restrictive default privacy settings will no doubt appeal to nervous-about-the-social neophyte niches. Overall though, 2pad doesn’t differentiate enough to justify its steep price premiums.

2pad, flickr photos

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Zooomr on Uncov: Ouch.

I’ve always stayed out of Zooomr related discussions, as yes, I think it borrows to much from Flickr, and yes, I think its only success factor is some clunky “features” and the “heartwarming underdog” status of its underage, two person team — yadda yadda yadda all of which has been repeated ad nauseam elsewhere.

I’m also a regular reader of Uncov - the snarky, technically competent tech blog that offers biting reviews. Well, today Uncov took a swing at Zooomr, and I think I’m going to have to un-read, and unsubscirbe from the uncov.

There’s writing honest pithy reviews in an entertaining tone, and then there’s making a personal assualt on others. Uncov attracted me for the first, and has lost me for the second. Who cares if Kristopher is spelt with a “K,” Ted, or if Thomas Hawk is a bit of a goof (referring to the comment stream here). If you really loathe the site, tear apart its functionality and rip-offs and leave it at that. Personally, I like to read entertaining, interesting posts on technology - not character assasinations.

flickr, uncov, unsubscribe zooomr

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Yahoo in the News: Committing brand seppukku and Hooray for Flickr

Wow - this morning was an eye opener.

Yahoo is shutting down Yahoo Photos in to focus on Flickr. Yahoo’s gotten cut on repeatedly for having massive overlap and redundancy in its offerings, causing brand confusion, and diluting the value proposition of each; perhaps they’re finally starting to act on the Peanut Butter Manifesto or whatever it was. Question: Is it a good idea?

I have to say: It seems bizarre. Yahoo has a massive installed user base with Yahoo Photos. To shut that down - instead of (as Danny suggests) just maintaining it and focusing investment on Flickr, seems bizarre. Add in the “user export” options and its becomes a macabre version of service suicide.

Why force members out into the cold? Why not gradually transition them over time by making it easy and advantageous to switch to Flickr? This move means nothing to Flickr users, and will piss of Yahoo Photos users, so what’s the upside here from a user standpoint? Nothing, as far as I can see. Yahoo needs to put users back into their business decisions.

While I applaud service openness and the ability to export photos to competitors is clearly designed to create warm & fuzzies, it just seems misplaced. Is Yahoo Photos hemmoraghing cash or something? I wonder if there’s more backstory to this.

1. Scobleizer tells us how Arrignton posted the news from a dinner (cool).
2. Mathew Ingram wraps up comments to the effect that the move may backfire given that Yahoo Photos hosts 2 billion pictures, and that Flickr uses a paid premium membership model.
3. Danny Sullivan focuses on the fact that Yahoo will offer to transition users to other services other than Flickr, and wonders what the hell Yahoo is doing disassembling a successful service and shunting users elsewhere.

EDIT: Zoli has a great summation of the Peanut Butter manifesto context:

A key idea in Brad Garlinghouse’s Peanut Butter Manifesto was to eliminate redundancy within Yahoo, kill overlapping products that compete with each other. Yesterday Mr. Peanut-Butter himself, along with Flickr Co-Founder Stewart Butterfield broke the news to TechCrunch: Yahoo will shut down Photos, in favor of Flickr.

flickr, techcrunch yahoo

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Boooo to Amazon - Suing Statsaholic: Amazon API/ECS Boycott time?

EDIT: HOW ABOUT MONDAY, APRIL 23rd FOR AN API ECS BOYCOTT? Post your thoughts in the comments. By “boycott” I mean if you use ECS to link to Amazon for affiliate sales, shut ‘er down and hit amazon in the wallet.

As a frequent user of the Amazon ECS API and follower of Amazon’s forays into platform-territory (S3, etc), I find it very disappointing to read about Amazon suing Statsaholic [Alexaholic] [via Mashable].

Mashable has the actual filing in their post, but the nub of it is that Statsaholic took Amazon’s open data and application platform and added value to it by offering an expanded feature set around Amazon’s offering, much like I did with the Flickr API and Google Maps on BlockRocker.com [flickr portion since removed], and much like many mashup artists have done thousands of times all over the net. I identified a gap in Flickr’s product offering and filled it, using their API. Flickr benefited, and so did I. When Flickr released their own geotagging product, I let the photo portion of BlockRocker die a slow death, eventually shuttered it, and that was that.

The same thing should have happened with Amazon and Statsaholic. Why Amazon feels the need to sue a niche business out of existence rather than thanking them for the adoption they’ve driven to this point and clobbering them with a superior product is anyone’s guess.

Perhaps the Amazon Mashup community should unite in solidarity against bullying of API-partners by having an Amazon shutdown day: I imagine if everyone using the Amazon API shuttered it for a day in protest, Amazon would feel some impact. I’ll Amazon links on UpcomingDiscs.com and HDDB.net - anyone else? What’s a good date?

alexa, alexaholic, amazon, blockrocker, boycott, flickr, mashable statsaholic

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