I don’t get it, I don’t think they have alot of users, and the site is basically a clone of flickr with some added features.

Where’s the value?

VCs and M&A managers are so desperate to throw away money. Funny to watch.

I could see someone paying half a million or so to acquire both a talented engineer and a fully-baked flickr clone. Upwards of $1m would seem exorbitant given the apparent lack of userbase.

Zooomr is still evolving. They are also churning out new features. Plus, with Thomas Hawk on the team, it adds a level of legitimation..

I’m not going to leave flickr, but I’ll use Zooomr for the features than Flickr lacks..

“I don’t get it, I don’t think they have alot of users, and the site is basically a clone of flickr with some added features.

Where’s the value?”

Exactly!

It’s says their going live today. And they just were “rumored” to received $5 million. Fishy story.

The lack of an easy mass upload feature makes it unattractive. Who need it when you have picasaweb and flickr *shrug*

Any guesses commenters as to who would want to acquire?

All the big guys either already have their own Photo thing (or in Yahoo!’s case 2 of them) or could whip one up pretty quick.

Ross, an easy mass upload feature will be here shortly. Everyone should stay tuned for our launch at 5pm today. We’ve got some pretty cool new features coming your way. If you are around SF and want to see the site come by our launch tonight at Valleyschwag. If you are press or a blogger and want to see the site in SF prior to the launch tonight we are doing a press thing later today but it’s private. You can contact me through thomashawk.com if you would like to be included.

Ebrahim, we have features that flickr doesn’t have and flickr has features that we don’t have. Both are great sites. I use both myself. But we are committed to quickly rolling out new features very very fast. You will see some of that in V2 today and you will see even more of it in the months ahead.

I’m sure years ago that a lot of people said Google was nothing more than a clone of Yahoo! with no users. We expect to continue to rapidly build and deploy fantastic features to delight the Zooomr community.

Come look at Zooomr 2 this afternoon and then come back in a month and another month and another month and you will watch the best photo sharing site in the world evolve. Yes, we need to get a lot more users there but we are getting the word out on this and already have seen impressive growth in site that nobody had heard of before a few months ago.

Ross, we are doing things that both Picasaweb and flickr are not.

Also folks keep in mind that there is a whole big non English speaking world out there. Zooomr has been built in 15 languages. We think having a photo sharing site in someone’s native language is going to count for something too. This is going to create an interesting international element to the Zooomr community that you will not find elsewhere.

I know this sounds critical, but I find this hard to believe. My impression from reading your constant coverage of Zooomr is that you are hyping them as the next “holy grail” of photo sharing, when they are average at best. Whenever I read one of your posts about them I can’t help but thinking, why are they hyping this up so much? I have given Techcrunch a break in the past and figure you must be good friends or connected somehow with the guy who created it. Probably doing him a favor, whatever. Now this? This just screams b*llsh*t! I can’t help but think you are trying to spread false rumors in order to stir up some real interest. Shame on you if you are. If you aren’t, then shame on me, I am looking to deep.

The fact of the matter is that 99% of the features probably don’t matter to the regular users, geotagging and what not. What made flickr is the community, the people. That, and only that, determines the value of a site to me. Other aspects are too easily cloned.

I’m not sure where the idea came from that a great software product or website is inherently trivial to create, but it’s starting to test my nerves. No other product or service is criticized in this way.

Fine. Flickr is community, but it’s a also a technology with flaws. Isn’t Zooomr just a case of healthy competition?

Excellent points, Erik.

Drew - TechCrunch is about web 2.0 companies. By the looks of Zooomr, I’d say it’s definitely a “web 2.0 company”. Why shouldn’t the TechCrunch crew follow it?

Put the shoe on the other foot - When Flickr first appeared, people said it wouldn’t succeed because there are already too many photo sharing sites. With that said, Flickr innovated - it’s a case of “the users go where the features are”. Sure Flickr is a community, but it wouldn’t have been a communitiy if it didn’t have an awesome set of features.

It just gets on my nerves that people forget the fact that every company starts at the bottom. Flickr didn’t just appear one day and have millions of users. Don’t expect Zooomr to be any different - it takes time to build a community.

Ultimately, those with the best features and ease-of-use will win.

Drew, of course I’m talking about them I’m their Chief Evangelist. I’m part of the company.

Previous to joining the company though my coverage of them was as an enthusiastic blogger who thought Kris was building out very very cool features. I wrote a post a while back about how Kris built trackbacks in less than an hour for Zooomr. Trackbacks were my single most requested feature from other photosharing sites. And still nobody else has them. Your photo gets 1,000 hits. As the photographer you are curious — you want to know why your photo is getting 1,000 hits. The answer most likely is because someone blogged your photo. Zooomr shows you where. I’m not the only one who wanted this functionality.

Kris and I are committed to building out the very best funcitionality for a photo sharing site in the world. We think people will find these features attractive and while there is already a community at Zooomr an even bigger one will grow. And many tools to lubricate community growth will be rolled out later today.

“99% of the features probably don’t matter to the regular users,”

But Wesley, what if the features make building community that much easier. I never thought I’d geotag but it’s addictive as hell when you start seeing all of the best shots closest to your shot showing up. A strong community based photo sharing site needs to be built around helping people find each other. Both online and offline. These are the kind of features we are building and are features that will make the community side of Zooomr in the end it’s most attractive asset.

And Drew, nobody is trying spread any false rumors. I’d rather the M&A side of this had not come out at this point, but yes, we have been talking to some people, I’m sure a lot of small companies do. I’m not going to comment or provide any details on this whatsover though. Irrespective of all of that we are seriously and passionately committed to building the best community based photo sharing site in the world.

Hypothetical Conversation between Techcrunch and Zooomr’s Kris Tate:

Techcrunch Guys: Wow, great interface you have here, after seeing this demo we are really impressed, it looks like Flickr, with more features. We really like it.

Kris: Thanks.

Techcrunch Guys: Now you just need a community behind it and you will be well on your way to millions!

Kris: Yeah, building the community is paramount to the success of this project.

(evil music starts playing)

Techcrunch Guys: Well………We might be able to help with that *wink* *wink*.

Kris: Really?

Techcrunch Guys: Really. But, what’s in it for us?

Kris: Well I guess……. in return for some publicity I could include you guys as partners somehow, would that work?

Techcrunch Guys: We want 15% if you are ever acquired, and we want it in writing.

Kris: *thinking*

Kris: Ok, deal. In return you must shamelessy promote zooomr on Techcrunch as often as possible.

*Techcrunch nods*

*Contract is signed, etc, etc, etc*

The next days headline:

Flickr Has Some Catching Up To Do

—————————————

Just how I envisioned it in my head, don’t take it personally

Didn’t know you were part of the company until now. After I wrote the fake conversation up there. Well, that makes sense, you should have made it more obvious to me the casual reader you had a vested interest in Zooomr before hand. That way, I would be aware you were biased when reading the posts about Zooomr.

And the fake conversation is just a spoof, again, don’t take it personally.

Drew…

You contradict yourself. If the company isn’t all that good, and TechCrunch kept plugging it, why is the Zooomr userbase expanding? Just because you throw tons of people at a service doesn’t mean they will like it. I could advertise some pretty shitty stuff on a site like CNN (with TONS of users), and still never get a single user. With that said, we can deduce the following:

1) The service is in fact good
2) People find the TechCrunch post about Zooomr is, surprisingly, interesting and informative

Why don’t you e-mail TechCrunch and ask what their relation to Zooomr is?

Drew…

From the article: “Thomas Hawk joined them shortly afterwards”

Robert….

I am a little confused here, as a casual reader of this site through the RSS feed I don’t know who works /writes for Techcrunch. My original comment was directed at the original article “Zooomr Being Courted”.

When Thomas responded I assumed he was the one who wrote the article. In fact, Michael Arrington did. So my mistake. Anyhow my original comments and criticism have been directed at Techcrunch. I still don’t know if Thomas Hawk writes for Techcrunch. Does he?

My criticism is of Techcrunch, to be clear.

Again:

All my comments, especially the part about Techcrunch making it more clear to the readers about the partnership with Zooomr were directed at *Techcrunch*. Not “Thomas Hawk”. He must have assumed I was responding to his post, which I wasn’t. I then assumed he was the one who wrote the original article, which he wasn’t.

I was just commenting on the article. If he is a writer/partner with Techcrunch then my comments are directed to him as well.

Honestly, if people STOPPED developing new sites because there are plenty of other sites already out there, THEN there would be something to wonder about.

I find it so strange that people are knocking a new photo site simply because good photo sites already exist… (hyping from TechCrunch aside)

Laura

Drew, I, Michael Arrington, wrote the post. I have no financial connection to Zooomr. Thomas Hawke is a recent Zooomr employee, and has no financial connection to TechCrunch. I hope that clears things up.

This blog is in many ways a celebration on entrepreneurialsm. I am passionate about startups in the same way others are passionate about sports, or art. It’s my thing. Sometimes people don’t get that, and assume I must have some other agenda. I don’t.

On a final note, this post is not pro-zooomr. I am more than sure that the information in the second paragraph around their asking price is something that they would have appreciated not being disclosed.

My key issue with using the site, is the name. It’s a good name, but I’m definatly never going to remember that extra “O”. To boot, it’s hard to tie photo’s to the name of “zooomr” — or is it just me (Yes, I understand zoom on a camera)? When you think of a picture site, you don’t really think about “zooming” your camera.

Robert…

I disagree with this…

Robert Said: “You contradict yourself. If the company isn’t all that good, and TechCrunch kept plugging it, why is the Zooomr userbase expanding? Just because you throw tons of people at a service doesn’t mean they will like it…”

Response: If you “throw” users at something doesn’t mean they will like it. Your right, it doesn’t. But it does mean the userbase will expand, because people will sign up to try it. So just because the Zooomr usebase is expanding doesn’t mean the service is good. It simply means lots of people are reading about it and sign up to try it.

It is a simple: The more it gets plugged by Techcrunch, the more the userbase expands. People will try it just because Techcrunch is hyping it. This has no reflection on its worth.

Robert Said: “Drew - TechCrunch is about web 2.0 companies. By the looks of Zooomr, I’d say it’s definitely a “web 2.0 company”. Why shouldn’t the TechCrunch crew follow it?”

Response: There is a difference between following it and slobbering all over it. Telling me about it once is enough. The constant praise, adoration, and rumor spreading is unecessary and annoying.

Michael…

Thanks for clearing that up. It is good to know that you have no vested interest in Zooomr. I just couldn’t help but feel you did. Just looking to deep on my part I guess. In any case, I don’t want to see anymore Zooomr articles on Techcrunch for at least a few month

To everyone else…

I am not knocking Zooomr, and I hope it isn’t taken that way. I respect the hard work by Kris and wish him and Zooomr the absoloute best.

The only thing I am knocking is Techcrunch for over-hyping it. I hope that is clear.

Drew - slow day at the office?

Michael - LOL

Drew, don’t take this personally but I think you need to try and do a little homework and research before you throw accusations like that around. If I were Arrington I’d be insulted that you’d insinuate he had a financial interest in Zooomr when he does not. You could at least ask before making serious accusations.

You didn’t even read the original article closely enough to see who actually wrote it. You thought I did. And you didn’t bother to do any research at all as to my relationship with Zooomr.

Anyone who visits my blog will see that in the about me section on the first page of the site and in my blogger profile I clearly state that I am the Chief Evangelist for Zooomr. I also think I do a pretty good job of disclosing it in the articles that I have writen up, using phrases like:

“I’m disqualifying Zooomr from the list as I’m totally biased right now and I’d be mocked when I put them at number one.”

and

“We will be officially launching the site at Valleyschwag3 in San Francisco on Friday night at 365 Brannan St. from 8pm to midnight.” We of course implying that I’m a part of the company.

Certainly those who read my blog of course know this, but even you the casual user ought to do a little better reserach before making those kind of conflict of interest accusations.

I don’t want to be heavy about this of course and please don’t take it personally but I think a reader has to put at least a little effort into figuring some of these things out.

Thomas…

I was insuating Techcrunch is biased about Zooomr, because that is how it came across to me as a casual reader, simple as that.

I read the article very closely, I didn’t pay attention to the author. When you responded to me, you assumed I was talking to you in my original comment (I wasn’t). Then when you responded to me I assumed you were the one who wrote the article(you weren’t). That was a misunderstanding on both our parts, and I am sorry for that. I shouldn’t have assumed you were the author.

I have never read your blog or any of your articles so *I am not criticizing you* for not disclosing anything. I thought you wrote for Techcrunch(above), and thats the only reason the disclosure issue was brought up. So consider it a non-issue.

It wasn’t a lack of effort, I just was confused temporarily by the way the comments fell and I responded to quickly.

My orginal criticism had nothing to do with you, and still doesn’t.

And don’t worry, I don’t take it personally

Jeremy we could have gone with four o’s in zooomr but as Google and Yahoo only have two we thought that would have been pretentious at this early stage — but three o’s have got to be better than two o’s, no?

Thomas,

I understand Zooomr has some cool features and is a ‘usable’ application. But with so much of competition existing already, and an acquisition rumor even before a product is released seems….just hype. Atleast for now.

I’d be interesting to checkout Zoomr 2 in a couple of hours. I’m all positive.

Ebrahim,

The competition doesn’t bother me. Not in the least. In fact, I hope what Zooomr develops spurs innovation in the entire crowded photo sharing space. The world is a huge place and digital photography is growing so, so, fast. Did you see all those cameras at the World Cup?

As crowded a place as the photo sharing world is we firmly believe that by building super great community rich features that we can build a place that people want to hang out.

I’m a photogeek, photonerd, whatever. It’s in my blood. I’ve got over 7,000 processed digital photos, another 70,000 or so unprocessed photos and a goal to build a library of 100,000 before I die. Clearly I’m an early adopter but…

People will want and do want to unlock the rich meta data that is locked up in their photos. Even if they don’t realize it yet today. The way that this data can be presented to people, the way it can be organized, the ways that they can interact with it to tell stories and share, the way that tools can be built to make discovery and interacting with photos easier, all have huge implications. Admitedly I’m biased, but Kris is a genius. He’s only 18 but he started coding when he was four years old. I’ve never seen someone who can develop features combined with a rich understanding of the implications for the features he creates as he does.

Sure. There is a lot of excitement and a lot of hype built around Zooomr right now. But like I said, come back a month from now, and another month after that and another month after that and watch how things evolve. You are going to see some pretty cool things being built in this space. People will like the tools that we create for them to interact with their own photos, but even more importantly the tools we create to help them connect with old friends and new and interesting people alike. And we will roll these tools out much faster than our competition.

My favorite is: “The company, which is still in beta, raised…”

Beta companies…talk about a bubble

Did you seriously just compare the Zooomr-Flickr relationship to Google-Yahoo?

Ashish, nope, my comment was directed at the criticism that the photo sharing place is already crowded, why create another photo sharing site.

My point was that even when a really good product exisits (as Yahoo was in search) that this doesn’t mean that another company can’t come along and create a better product. Some might have said when Google came out that there was not a need for yet another search engine in the crowded search engine space. I believe that there is always room for new companies to come out and innovate in crowded spaces even when they get labeled as yet another XYZ clone.

I’m not saying Zooomr is to Google as Flickr is to Yahoo. If this is how you read this you are reading wayy too much into that.

I can feel your enthusiasm. Teen entrepreneurs (like Kris Tate) usually do a wonderful job since they do it for passion and fun (and fame), not just money.

Countdown is making me antsy, I’ll just check it tommorow.

Arrington seems to get fixated on certain sites and runs these rumors as facts. The tribe.com 50 mill buyout rumor is proving to be false. I know this is a blog and any joe shmoe can create one, but how about some facts.

From what we’ve heard so far, it sounds like Flickr will have no problem opening its API to Zooomr (assuming Zooomr does the same with a yet-to-be-released API). While there is a competition between these two companies, ostensibly there will be a cooperation. This benefits the user tremendously and therefore makes choosing a side silly endevour. If one company offers a different subset of features it becomes only a matter of preference, since the data is easily exchanged between the two. The winner is not Flickr or Zooomr, but the user. This is the fun part - sitting back and seeing what happens…

I got to agree with most of the other posts, stop writing about Zooomr and focus on other new companies.

fireIsiah> The point of an article that starts with “rumors are circulating” is that it is precisely not a fact - yet. By definition, some of these are right, some are not.
I don’t see how you could construe this post as being run as a fact.

Anyone fancy a pint?

eh…ill stick to deviant art =D
it has a HUGE community….

Hey, Kris, Michael and I are hanging out at RubyredLabs right now getting ready for tonight’s big party at 365 Brannan St. If anyone’s in San Francisco tonight and wants to come by our launch, come on by. Did I mention free beer?

http://blog.zooomr.com/2006/07.....free-beer/

LOL@Chris

—–
I am a little confused here, as a casual reader of this site through the RSS feed I don’t know who works /writes for Techcrunch. My original comment was directed at the original article “Zooomr Being Courted”.

When Thomas responded I assumed he was the one who wrote the article. In fact, Michael Arrington did. So my mistake.
—–

Let that be a warning: never jump to conclusions nor make assumptions without doing your research! In bloglines, each TechCrunch article has the author clearly stated beneath the post title. I expect it’s the same in other RSS readers too.

I also think criticism of Michael Arrington’s coverage of Zooomr is quite misplaced. 1) if you don’t like it, read another blog. 2) Zooomr is pushing the envelope in terms of features and user experience, something Flickr can no longer do because of it’s huge userbase and associated complex server and software infracstructure.

Zooomr is an exciting new company and deserves all the coverage it gets.

looks like little drew is jealous that a 18 year old is going to get $5 million for a website he created while drew is earning $2/day from his little adsense website

hahaha

No I think he is tired of reading articles about zooomr. me to… find a new company to write about..

Disclaimer: I am one of the contributors to BubbleShare (some label us as a competitor to Zooomr). I also have met Chris and Michael on various occasions in person.

Kris is a very talented guy, regardless of his age. He has a solid sense of user experience and visual design. He is passionate and committed about his work. Lets give him some respect for that.

Lets also give Michael some respect for building a community/site that has helped rally many of us web2.0 trackers keep up to date with the latest.

Regardless of what your opinion is of Kris, he is working his damnest to push the envelope of digital photos online. I might not agree with all his comments, but Kris has introduced some very interest new implementations and ideas that go beyond existing ones — good or bad, he’s giving all of us choice.

We all stand on the shoulder of giants, Kris borrowed many ideas from Flickr, and so have we at BubbleShare. I’m sure Flickr has borrowed and have been influenced by many other leading sites. But the cool thing about the web is that we have these super fast user experience design experimentations that happen in real time across all sites. These rapid new innovations, even when they fail, helps everyone identity the good and bad though the parallel prototyping that happens amongst competitors within an industry. The successes are rapidly borrowed and become influential amongst its peer groups, and the failures are quickly identified and become one option for others to have to choose from.

In the end, the reason why we have great web services today is because there are passionate people that are trying to build something better. People like Kris, Stuart, and my passionate friends/partners at BubbleShare.

If you think it sucks, then shut up and actually go and BUILD someting better.

Those of you who are passionately trying to push the even elope, rock on!

– albert, founder, bubbleshare

This doesn’t suprise me not only is it a fantastic tool which is going to beat Flickr in terms of technology, getting hold of Kris and the few guys he has with him is a great move.

seeing as how techcrunch will be posting about zooomr when version 2 launches… why didn’t you just save this post until you do a review on version 2? Things like this is what makes it seem like you are definitely favoring zooomr and write about it more than necessary.

My 2 cents