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44 Comments
- bamassippi, on 10/12/2007, -4/+23The more appropriate question is: Why does Zoomr feel the need to steal Flickr's "r"
Differentiation is the key to success. You didn't see Google naming themselves "Yahee!" did you? - zimm, on 10/12/2007, -6/+24
all companys should be forced to share their stuff for no profit.
and i should be allowed to borrow your stuff for free...
so uh... hey man... can i "borrow" your car? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19don't see how you can really blame them..
- awfulshot, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15hardly, maybe i am just a flickr fanboy.. but the zoomer interface sucks..
it seams like a bad version of flickr but with a few new features like the geotagging.. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Flickr doesn't claim to own the people's pics. They just don't feel like they should pay for people leaving their site for a competitor, and I don't blame them. The owner of a storage unit doesn't have to pack your stuff for you when you leave.
Flickr's (and a ton of other sites) entire value is the investment the users make in the site, and the fact that once they use it it's difficult to change services.
The onus should be on Zooomr to make the export tool for their users, not Flickr. - lukas88, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11zooomr is pretty cheeky to rip off their site, rip off their name, and then expect them to bend over backwords for them.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7I'm not crazy about flickr user interface but zoomr is lame
- arg553, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6actually you automatically own the copyright to any picture you take. It is pretty clearly explained on flickr's site
- Kebie, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Isn't zooomr run by like a 17 year old kid or something? He is just being a cheeky prick by complaining about stuff like this and trying to diss flickr in the mashup/whatever free sharing community.
I would do the same if I was him. But I was flickr I would totally tell him to ***** off. He can get his own customers. It isn't like everyone is displeased with flickr. - findyourownpath, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yeah, that's one of the things I'm fixing in Zooomr 2 -- The Google login thing has been more trouble than it has been worth.
-Kristopher - gridrunner, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I think it's fair enough. Right now Zoomr is just a startup made by some kid (albeit obviously a very intelligent kid). But he is offering a direct alternative, and it will probably improve and expand over time. It has some cool features that Flickr does not.
Flickr is a business (part of Yahoo!) so I wouldn't expect them to open the API to a directly comparable service. Not for free anyway. - Darwinian, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Mmm Flickr was always good, and it's just kept improving since big money has started being pumped into it from Yahoo!
If I use Flickr, why would I even want to move over to this Zooomer business. Flickr is where all my photos already are, everyone else knows they're there. Why would I want to move? - rwelsh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It's also in beta. I know I know, everything is in beta these days. But it's being started up and things are still being tested.
They did just swap over to new servers about a month or two back, and Zooomr 2.0 (a revamp based on results of their beta testing) is supposed to optimize the load times as well. I've noticed a SIGNIFICANT improvement speedwise (uploads and load times).
I'm not preaching Zooomr here; I've seen a lot of good points here from both sides, I'm just asking you to remember some important facts: Flickr's been around for a while, has a lot of Yahoo!'s money, Zooomr is still in relatively infant beta stages, making the mistakes that need to be made in order to figure out where to step next. - rwelsh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2That's very good to know, Kris. :-) Thanks for listening.
- richardiscool, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Zoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooomr or whatever it's called is soooooooo slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow. I gave up before the page loaded last time, and this is a 6meg connection.
- rwelsh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2That's correct, zoineg. To be clearer, there is no storage limit with either service, as I understand it, only a monthly upload limit. 20mb for unpaid Flickr, not sure about unpaid Zooomr (50 sounds right). With a paid Flickr account (USD$24.95/year) that upload limit is lifted, along with some more features. Zooomr paid features aren't known yet, since it isn't currently offered (all that early beta stuff).
If you want some basic comparisons, I wrote something up while I was at work this past week, because some of my friends have been hounding me about what this Zooomr stuff is all about. My article isn't anything awesome, just tosses around some observations about what I liked, didn't, and some differences about the services. Maybe you'll find something useful, maybe not. http://www.ryanwelsh.net/blog/2006/06/zooomr-giving-flickr-run-for-its-money.html
I'm curious to see what the paid Zooomr accounts will offer and how those will compare/compete. - Mesum, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I think we are missing the other side of the story... Did the owner of Zoomr offered Flickr his API in exchange or he just want to ride the 2nd free side after Google Maps API?
- xoineg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I was looking at the same info and for Zoomr is 50MB, but they don't say if this is montly or all you get. For flickr i think is 20MB a month, which seems too low specially if you have high resolution cameras and want to have better quality pictures.
- blanski, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5The question is, why do Web 2.0 start-ups feel the need to name their web services without a vocal?
- squarehappy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1In the comments on the TechCrunch article, Tate (creator of Zooomr) offers open access of Zooomr's API to Flickr in exchange for the same. Very "Web 2.0" of him, but face it, Zooomr has nothing to offer Flickr. The only reason Flickr would have any incentive to do this is for the benefit of their own users and the flexibility it allows them with their images (importing and exporting photos as they please) but that's a strategy that will only benefit in the very long term. Meanwhile, it would give Zooomr a huge leg up.
I'm all for letting information be free, but progress isn't made with that giddy feeling in your stomach that you did good. It's made because of incentives, i.e., money. - radicaldementia, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I tried going to zoomr, and all I got was a ton of python script errors, complete with sourcecode o.O
- brucebeh, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3hm, i personally favour the Flickr user-interface much more and i haven't came across an ad yet on Flickr (even though they say they have ads...)
- chesterjosiah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Because 7 ate 9.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2How much MB storage does zoomr and Flickr give you?
Just a fast question, I need to know... - jbenson2, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Zooomr is incredibly slow with a lousy interface and the kid who runs it thinks the world owes him free access to his competition. Time for the kid to wake up and smell the coffee.
- mistarOblivion, on 10/12/2007, -5/+5Is it just me, or is everyone supporting zoomr getting modded down like crazy?
- Mike89, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2They're trying to make an export tool, following Flickr's guidelines. They could easily parse the Flickr HTML (and will probably resort to this now), but it's alot of wasted bandwidth + CPU time on Flickr's end - so bad luck to them ;)
- Skeuomorph, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Simplicity and elegance?
http://blog.zooomr.com/2006/02/15/google-login-20/ - rwelsh, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Yeah the Google login was a dismal failure. I like many of Zooomr's ideas, but the login system...my gods. They need to just suck it up and make a plain old Zooomr login like almost any other site and offer that as an option.
- AhmedF, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Free publicity ... good times.
It is a bit funny that Zoomr offers a reverse commercial API to Flickr for free, and expects the same. Because they both obviously have the same size content/user base (and the -r was obviously a Sony-esque move and originally thought of in 1994). - cinder, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I got a Zooomr account almost as soon as it was available (so I could get a good permaurl in case it ever became popular). I haven't used it since. Flickr is waaaaay better than Zooomr (Flickr is faster, cleaner, and has a better interface).
- thomashawk, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1"Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. How did this change come about? I do not know. What can make it legitimate? That question I think I can answer." Jean Jacques Rousseau.
A lot of charged language has been flying around over the past four days or so with regards to Flickr and what rights their users ought or ought not to have with regards to their content. It started off with a thread in Flickr Central when Google launched their new Picasa photo sharing app and has escalated from there to Digg, TechCrunch and now Slashdot.
As I've been involved in the recent debate since it started I wanted to offer up my thoughts on the matter at hand. It's important to note that yesterday I joined Zooomr, a direct competitor to Flickr. I've kept quiet on the posts over the weekend because I wanted to announce that before offering up anything more on the subject than I already have.
As one of Flickr's heaviest users I feel that I have a decent understanding of the situation and problem at present.
A number of months back Anil Dash wrote a post called "The Interesting Economy." In this post Anil posed the most basic question of all from a Flickr user's perspective, "what's in it for me?"
From Anil: "But interestingness in Flickr doesn't pay. At least not yet. Non-pro users are seeing ads around my photos, but Yahoo's not sharing the wealth with me, even though I've created a draw. Flickr's plenty open, they're doing the right thing by any measure of the web as we saw it a year ago, or two years ago. Today, though, openness around value exchange is as important as openness around data exchange."
Caterina Fake responded to Anil with the following: "Everyone needs to get paid, businesses need to thrive. I don't begrudge blogs like Anil's their AdSense links, or Flickr displaying ads on free accounts (I may have a bias there). But monetization strategy or no, the culture of generosity is the very backbone of the internet. It is why I have always loved it."
At the time, and still today, I agree with Caterina Fake. I have always felt that I've gotten much more out of Flickr than money could ever provide and thus I've felt it more than a fair deal. I don't need to be paid by Flickr. I enjoy the generosity that Caterina speaks of and love the share and share alike spirt of Flickr. And over the past year I've spent hours and hours and hours working away at my flickrstream. Uploading new photos every day, meticulously documenting my images with detailed tags, building friends and making contacts, enjoying and sharing with everyone I meet, and participating actively in many different groups and conversations on the site. But lately I've been having some second thoughts.
The central issue around the recent debate is not whether or not you can get your photographs out of Flickr. Slashdot got this really wrong when they wrote, "yet Flickr's API only allows uploading, not exporting." There are several tools that have already been developed to allow exporting out of Flickr. Downloadr and Slickr come to mind immediately.
You absolutely can get your photographs out of Flickr your photos are not locked up. Flickr is not the roach motel that others have been making it out to be.
What is at issue is not your photos, but the metadata associated with your photos. At present Flickr does not keep the tags that you use to name and organize your photos in the photo files themselves. Rather these tags are part of a larger Flickr database that Flickr associates with your images. And this is the real issue to focus on. How can you as a user, and should you as a user, be able to easily get all of your photos and the metadata associated with them out of flickr and on to a competitive platform.
Recently Zooomr requested a Commercial API from Flickr. This request, in part, was based on a desire to create an easy way for users to migrate their photos and metadata over to Zooomr should they want to try/use the Zooomr service. Zooomr was denied this request by Flickr. Other sites, like Tabblo, who is perhaps viewed as less of a direct competitor to Flickr than Zooomr have been given API keys and have in fact used them to create tools that easily allow a user the ability to transfer their photos and metadata over to their service. I personally used the tabblo service and tool to transfer all my flickr photos and metadata there and you can check out how complete a transfer it was at my tabblo page here.
I think that it was a mistake to deny Zooomr this request. I think it was a mistake because at the foundation of this great thing that we call Web 2.0 I believe there exists a social contract between companies and their users that trumps business interests. Perhaps I'm being naive here but I firmly believe that the user's needs must always come first for any Web 2.0 company. As businesses profit from the free labor, goodwill and generosity that Caterina Fake writes of, I believe that while they may not be owed actual compensation, that they are owed every effort to protect their rights, privileges and control over that which they create and contribute.
It is very very cool how easy it was to transfer my entire flickrstream and all of the associated metadata easily and seamlessly over to tabblo. It should be that easy for any other site I choose to use as well. And while it should not be incumbent on Flickr to build the tools to do this, they should make their API available to other companies who would like to build these import tools nonetheless. They should do this because it's the right thing to do from their side of the user generated contract.
And I think Flickr feels this way too. In fact it should be noted that after denying Zooomr's original request, Flickr's Stewart Butterfield has expressed that he has had a change of heart with regards to allowing competitors access to Flickr commercial API keys and will most likely grant these requests if a competitor also agrees to allow Flickr access to their open API. I applaud this effort but in fact still think it needs to go a tad further. I do think that flickr should open up their API for building import/export tools for competitors irrespective of the status of their API. Again, I may be living in a utopia here, but I do believe that in the end doing the right thing always wins out. And if other sites want to stay closed while Flickr stays open then I think in the end users will respect Flickr all the more for this and it will create a stronger bond between them and their users. Zooomr by the way is committed to an open API and Kris is working on the finishing touches on Zooomr's as I write this.
One final thing. I think that in this entire debate Flickr has at times been portrayed as the bad guy here. This could not be further from the truth. In fact, Flickr has probably done more for user's rights and ability to control their content then just about any Web 2.0 company that exists today. They have popularized the Creative Commons license. They have routinely listened to and actively engaged their users. They have created broad tools to allow users to offer varying degrees of access, privacy and control over their images. They have carefully cultivated an environment of mutual respect between they and their users and have constantly fought for the rights of these users. They will likely even change their position with regards to granting competitors Commercial API keys. They have been about as fine an example of good stewardship in the user generated contract as exists today. In all of this I think it's unfair for anyone to suggest otherwise. - gooddoggytreat, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1To tell you the truth, this is the first time I've ever heard of Zooomr, they must be reaping the benefits of this digg, because now this might just turn into some sort of Web 2.0 being the new anti-capitalist view on business. Open Source? How about Open Business? Ford wouldn't give Honda tools to build their cars with from their own shop, if they were smart anyway.
Don't look at Flickr as a bad guy, put yourself in their situation. - gotrevgo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Choosing a picture based on location is an excellent idea but the implementation isn't so stellar. I doubt it would be considered a competitor at all if it had used one more lettr.
- zimm, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2flickr is governed by yahoos terms of service.
and if you ever read that long legaleze ***** text... you'll find that yahoo owns the rights to anything you upload to yahoo. unless its already copyrighted by someone else.
same as msn. same as youtube. same as just about every other site that allows content upload. they own it. can do what they want with it. and you agreed to it. and you also agreed to let them change the terms at any time for any reason without notifiying you. and you still agree. - cleverboy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Not at all. This is just free publicity for "_ooomr". More like... Lamr.
- CaughtThinking, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Uhhh, I don't think that makes any sense at all. Should Google give Yahoo a commercial api? No, that doesn't work. The apis are for Business to Consumer, not Business to Competitor.
Shove it in your Web 2 point Hole. - baraqiyal, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1Hey BloodJunkie, you're slowing down - you only got one story on the front page today.
- ScottTheRobot, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0haha, "zooomr." that's clever.
- boredzo, on 10/12/2007, -14/+8Photos shared on flickr aren't flickr's property, they're the property of the user who uploaded them.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1the post is lame
- docillenstein, on 10/12/2007, -14/+2Works for music and mp3s, right? We've somehow decided that it's ok to share/steal some things, but not others.
- rtater, on 10/12/2007, -14/+2Flickr would be smart to give zooomr the API key to keep the crowd quiet... If not, it shows that they dont want their users to have the availability to switch to zooomr, atleast to test the zooomr project. In response their users might ask "what are they hiding," and start switching regardless of their old photos. All around the ease of moving photos and sharing photo experiences with a variety of communities is a great idea and one that should not be limited to a single community, like Flickr.
- chrislaw, on 10/12/2007, -23/+5Zooomr rocks. Flickr should definitely be afraid.
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