Webshots, a photo publishing and sharing service which was acquired by CNET in August 2004, is starting to launch social networking features to compete with the more cutting edge photo services like Flickr. Last month they launched the social networking features. Later today they will launch a new service called “College Live”, which targets the 30 million or so U.S. young adults between 18-25 years.
College live is a network of college specific Webshots sites that focus on photos from students at that college, and event planning. It’s for students only, and Webshots is using the same method as Facebook to try and keep a sense of exclusivity – by requiring the use of a .edu email address. The idea is to create a sense of community around those photos and events, and allow students to get to know eachother. It targets the same audience as Facebook, but offers different features. And while photos uploaded to a specific college site will be grouped there, the individual pictures will also be available on Webshots as well.
A screenshot of a college landing page is below. Additional screen shots (as well as a couple of pictures I took during my briefing) are here.
Webshots is a very large property, with about 40 million total users and 300 million photos. CNET as a whole, by the way, is still growing at a healthy rate – they had an average of 116 million unique monthly visitors in Q4 last year, which was up 13% from the same period in 2004. Average daily page views increased to 103 million, up 22 % from 2004. CNET says they want to be the Viacom of the online space with a number of standalone properties addressing different market. Along with Webshots, recent acquisitions of dating site Consumating and food site Chowhound show this strategy in action. Webshots is another (very large) property helping them achieve this goal.
Note: If you’d like to hear about the fascinating history of Webshots prior to CNET’s acquisition, listen to the first few minutes of this podcast, where Narendra Rocherolle, one of the founders, tells the story.
I think this is the right demographic for Webshots to go after – Photobucket, for instance, is only a basic photo hosting site, but it has seen huge growth after attracting the MySpace generation.
This isn’t so smart: “CNET says they want to be the Viacom of the online space with a number of standalone properties addressing different markets.” You can’t realize synergies across your product range with this strategy, IMHO.
webshots, if u there,
you still dont provide frame to post on personal website with slideshow of pictures.
Webshots is awesome, but I doubt if “College Live” will have much of an impact. Facebook and Flickr(and Yahoo Photos) already rule the space.
Nil,
Martin Green here – I’m the GM of CNET Networks’ Community group, which includes Webshots.
We recently launched the first iterations of blog badges (they are not front and center yet) – but they are available as a link at the bottom of every Webshots user page – for example mine:
http://communit.../user/marting44
In terms of other ways to share photos, there’s the post to blog functionality on every photo page, and the RSS and APIs in the footer here
http://www.webs...learn_more.html
and here
http://www.webs...l/services.html
Thanks for your comment – hope this helps,
best,
Martin
There is no such thing as ruling an internet space. All internet spaces are shared. There are more users than any site can keep happy.
They are shooting themselves in the foot with that name, “College Live”, how terribly lame.
Did you hear that?
I think it was the value of Facebook falling…
Webshots – College Photo Albums
http://communit...358662_node.htm
Feels like too little, too late. This niche market is already packed full.
The problem is facebook already has a built in photo sharing system, maybe it’s not as well advanced as this one, but the thing is that it’s already well established and “exclusive” to college students. I doubt people will make the jump eagerly to “College Live”.
Facebook has a huge foothold of the college student market, and I doubt this will change that, I’m certainly not going to move.
I agree with the above comment.
It is just like all of the copycat sites that came out after the facebook. Some were better, but nobody wanted to move over because they were already established on facebook.
The only value in Webshots before for the college crowd was that they could post pictures for everyone to see, not just their college friends. This is something you can’t do with facebook. But with college live, they have once again restricted it to just college students making it difficult to share with the general public.
I think the photo addicts may use this but as for the mass crowds…too little too late.
Those of you claiming Facebook has this market locked up would do well to take a look at the College section of Webshots [http://community.webshots.com/topics/62/121358662_node.htm]. It’s already incredibly popular for doing the types of things College Live is providing. The community has already built the product, they’re just adding a nice front to it and facilitating what people want to do.
Given that the market they’re targeting is already using the site in large numbers, the network effect is going to kick in real soon, especially with the popularity contests that are front and center in those screenshots.
I think those of you who think Facebook has it “locked up” either don’t know webshots, or don’t use Facebook.
Yes, “everyone is on Facebook” and that’s not likely to change. But at the same time, Webshots is enormously popular with a huge amount of people. Very ‘mainstream’, not necessarily online 24/7, and nice consumers, with $ to spend. They are going for something viral, something to boost Webshots and see what kind of verticals in photosharing they can get going. I think it’s a very smart move.
Sure, they’re not going to knock facebook off the college perch for social media, but they can gain a ton of users this way.
Facebook is way too popular and easy for the market to shift to College Live! And for all the tools and hacks that flickr has, Cnet has to provide something spectacular to get people to move to College Live..
And nobody would ever switch over to Google from Yahoo. Nobody would ever leave Microsoft for Apple or Linux. Come on people, there will never be such a thing as “locked up” anywhere. I’m not saying College Live is the one to knock Facebook off, but these assumptions some of you are making are just asinine.
And it’s not like CNet is starting with a 0 user community.
Scrivs you are right, but those examples you listed are where there was a signifigant improvement in features and even more so, quality. After looking at the webshots “college live” site in depth here’s what I have to say about it.
- The comments system is much poorer and you can’t comment on individual photo’s.
- Moreover any random person can comment so you really get no sense of community with friends.
- You can’t tag photos, one of my favorite features on facebook.
- The other “newer and better” features are lame and do absolutely nothing! Why on earth would you need a button to save an image?
- There are more ads, and they are more obnoxious than the ads on facebook. And the layout in general is not as clean and understandable.
So yes I know that webshots has a large base, and that Cnet is a force to be reckoned with but this “college live” does nothing that facebook doesn’t already do, and what it mimicks it does worse!
the pictures in general are way more raunchy though, I will give them that.
Travis: Great points, but don’t you think after a week’s worth of user feedback that the CNet team could easily get these things implemented fairly quickly?
But at the same time, Webshots is enormously popular with a huge amount of people.
Huh? I’m pretty internet savvy and so are my friends and Webshots has never crossed my mind, beyond remembering they were a company pre-bubble that sold for a lot of stock.
@Scrivs, Yes they can definately implement those features with no problem, but then what makes it unique? There’s not a huge amount of innovation in the system and that’s why I question why facebook users would make the effort to join.
Maybe CNet will suprise me though and pull a Coup on the facebook, who knows.
As far as features Webshots has that Facebook can’t match, the big one is that *albums can be public*. You guys seem to be missing this point. Facebook’s photo sharing is fine (and even preferable) for the shyer folks, but the popular kids want their pictures on display for the world. And Webshots gives them that, plus the ability to have their popularity confirmed through voting (on pictures, albums, parties, and people themselves).
When it comes to moving a fickle audience, the popular kids–your trendsetters–are going to be the ones you lean on. And they’re going to leave since there’s no running counter of their album views on Facebook.
There are a bunch of features listed in the feedback; most of them are being worked on or soon will be. Thanks for the feedback and to Michael for providing us an opportunity to engage.
To clarify our intentions: we are not launching competing functionality to Facebook to take their users away. Facebook does a great job of connecting college students with each other and we don’t assume that will change any time soon.
However, our users view us as complementary and millions of college students use both Webshots and Facebook.
Webshots’ college members told us they want two main things from us: evite+photo sharing and a “stage” for entertainment or reality tv for the campus.
Hope this frames our functionality/lack of functionality and approach.
Hey Martin,
I just dropped in on the site, and it seems pretty hard to find College Live right now. Once I did, though, I was pleasantly surprised to see people already on it, though technically I don’t think they know about it yet.
Are you guys going to publicize it more or wait for people to trickle in?
The trickle theory at first, hoping our members give us feedback, fix those things, and then publicize.
One exception: last night we notified Webshots members with edu email addresses about the service – you may be seeing the results of that.
why wont you let me downloadphotos
you say i have downloaded 5 photos
today for the last 3 days
could you please fix it
thanking you
GEOFF VOSS
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