Moo is an online printing service that now lets you turn your Flickr photos into small business cards. After logging in to your Flickr account, there’s a nice drag, drop and crop interface. The end result are thick, glossy cards that are long and narrow and about half the size of regular cards. The company will send you 100 of them for $20 and Flickr Pro users get 10 extra cards for free.
The site is getting heavy traffic today from BoingBoing and PlasticBag, so you may want to put it on the old calendar or jump over to FutureMe and send yourself and email to look at it later in the week. Apparently all the cool kids will have Moo cards by the end of the week.
This is a great value add via the Flickr API. More than a passing fad, Moo received $5 million in series A funding in April from The Accelerator Group, Atlas and Index Ventures. The nine person company was founded by Richard Moross of London.
If printing your photos in interesting ways is of interest, see also our review of Tabblo last week.
Who would want photo business card?
then hand them out and get odd looks as people think you’re unprofessional.
Nice idea. Love their site graphic design. I’m ordering.
Web 2.0 allows us to personalize your web experience.
It is also important to note the business model we are seeing that might develop in to a norm. To become successful, web companies are working together as opposed to working against each other.
Keep you eye on Google and Flickr.
As the Web changes so will business models.
Handing out photographs as business cards is confusing, difficult to read and unprofessional. End of story.
Everyone at Meez has their avatar on their business cards. This usually gets a warm reception and seems to leave a lasting impression. It’s a fun service, a fun card.
IMO this is a slightly ironic twist in the digital imaging scene when flickr is hooked up to an output service. Kodak could take a lesson about getting help leveraging an open api.
CG
My mother is a professional kitchen designer. She has a bunch of photos of finished project up in her flickr account…
For anyone who does visual work (custom kitchen design, artwork, etc) but who is not interested in spending time printing and cropping at home, this seems like a nice turn-key way of spreading the visuals.
So in some cases, VERY professional.
-dh
Hey this is a really neat idea! For the Moo folks, what are your printing on? Specifically is this iGen or Indigo?
We do live in a nice brave new world where these kinds of things are both possible and really interesting.
You have be totally unpleasable to like this service…
to those who don’t want a photo – fine, use photoshop to layout your cards with no graphics – just text… works wonderfully…
at any rate, the people who bagged on this seem – to me – to be curmudgeony trolls…
$.02
You’ve got to be kidding me.
The hubris of this site is so overwhelming I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to hear the thud of this stupid site collapsing from England.
HELLO PEOPLE THIS IS A COMPANY THAT PRINTS OUT PHOTO CARDS.
You can take out the Yellowpages and look up scores of print shops in your area and call them up for this service.
Is it the flashy site that’s making you think this is awesome?
Is it the flickr integration that’s making you think this is awesome?
Doesn’t flickr already have a third party printing service available?
Why does this company need 6 million dollars in funding to do this?
I figured out why they needed all that VC money; 75% of it must have went into buying the stupid domain name.
These are great, I don’t know if this can already be done, but I’ll be ordering myself up a set next time I have the money. Not everyone you give a business card is a business relationship, and giving a card with a neat picture to someone is a much better way to have them remember it then to write it on a bar napkin with a beer stain on it.
i found this instantly compelling. I take pride in the photos on my flickr blog but havent had a big need for a printed copy. I think small inexpensive printouts will be useful for something i can decorate my room with, or give certain photos to friends and family. I went to the site and order a pack. The interface is very very well done and all javascript – most impressive.
Cool idea and site, But 5 million for a simple service… Bubble 2.0 cannot be disputed any longer!
Hasn’t it been possible to do this for years on countless business card websites, minus the mild inconvenience of having to download and upload your photo to another service (probably in a higher quality)?
$5mn – how many MBAs does that pay for to stand around the shredder and feed $200 bills?
“Handing out photographs as business cards is confusing, difficult to read and unprofessional. End of story”
Unless your profession is photography?
Just a thought.
http://www.QOOP.com already has myCards live with flickr, facebook, Webshots, Photobucket and many others….old story…P
“Handing out photographs as business cards is confusing, difficult to read and unprofessional”
Sure, if you’re handing them out as business cards.
But if you’re using them as “personal” cards, they’re great. I have some of Moo’s “Pleasure Cards” (http://www.pleasurecards.com/), and they’re ace for handing out at networking events where I’m representing myself, not my employer.
i think they’re a great idea. not everyone needs business cards for business transactions. how bout just a quick way to introduce someone to one of your photos with name, email and website info? mixin’ business with leather…
Those who are are saying moo.com’s cards are unprofessional are clearly missing the point. Flickr simply isnt a professional photo site. Its an informal place for amatures to share their pictures or for pros who want to have a little fun. As such moo.com’s target audience is that informal group of people sharing their photos not the already pro elite who have their own business cards already.
I often take spontaneous portraits of people and I am constantly asked where the pictures can be viewed. I’ve been looking for a way to print up visually interesting calling cards with my contact information for awhile. So far all other online photo printers I’ve checked out are either too expenisive or don’t print in a small enough format.
Moo.com gets it right on both those counts with the added bonus of being able to make each card’s image totally unique.
I really think moo.com will do well indeed.
Actually, Flickr Pro users do NOT get 10 EXTRA cards for free. As a Flickr Pro user, you can get a 10 pack of cards for free (without ordering the 100 pack). I just ordered a 10 pack set to take a look at the quality as a Flickr Pro user.
I tend to agree with some of the comments. Most professionals would not use these as business cards with the exception of a few artistic professions; however, they are something cool to use in a more casual setting or just as a novelty for friends and family.
I could also see teenagers and college students using these to share their email address, IM, cell number, and maybe a MySpace / Friendster account with new friends.
Alaska Miller,
What a whiner. The online print service business is very, very big and continues to grow nicely… and the impact PSN sites have on that business has yet to be explored.
Furthermore, I sincerely doubt they’ve burned $5mm on what you see… so keep your panties on, and hunker down up der in dem dar Plains this winter, let’s see what else they have in store.
The cards ROCK, btw.
Wow, did the trolls from F*ckedCompany move here en masse? Here’s a clue to those moaning about these cards being ‘unprofessional’: they aren’t business cards. Now get back to your cubicle and straighten your ties.
Exactly. Great for handing out to family
I could also see teenagers and college students using these to share their email address, IM, cell number, and maybe a MySpace / Friendster account with new friends.
its a great way to print your buisness cards and its too cheap…..and moo is my pet name…………..ohhhhhhhh..
Dawn – Novelties fade in five minutes.
Lots of love and hate going on here, but for me, it’s a love (assuming the product quality is good). For my business this makes sense, as we work with experiences, and photos document our experiences. It’s fun and quirky, which is why I like it. It’s not for blue-collar companies, but hey for us people running cool startups, it might just work.
Perhaps it just has a novelty value, but I think it’s well executed and easily accessible. I don’t have the time to spend on the phone to traditional printers who might not interpret my instructions or intent correctly. This is the true value of the web, to cater for our impulsive and power-craving needs.
It strikes me that the people moaning are the same ones who complain about anything that is new or different.
The world changes. Things move on. If handing a card with an interesting design on it causes a conversation, that’s the ice broken right there.
Here’s a tip for those of you wanting to use Moo for fun, people always ask me where they can see my photos, I created cards that display links to search my user name with a blank underline where the rest of the querystring goes, like so: http://www.flic...52%40N00&q=
Using the underscore key I created a ‘blank’ area and will write in the tag they’ll want to search for (I tag religiously), like “ben+john” so the url all together would be: http://www.flic...&q=ben+john
Re professionalism & viability…get a clue people. I can’t believe all the nay sayers on this thread! While there are a lot of cheap places to get business cards online now, I don’t know of any that will allow you to do a different image for each card, and while this utility certainly wouldn’t be appropriate for all businesses’ business cards it’s perfect for photographers and hobbyists. It’s beautiful integration with Flickr alone makes it a great business idea – I’m sure they’ll get a lot of sales, it’s a great deal. I hate dealing with printing and trimming, I love getting packages in the mail, I’d pay more than what they’re asking for this service!
Love/Hate is a good mix. It means it works. cf:
http://headrush...veandhate_1.jpg
http://headrush...cs_of_pass.html
Moo’s flickr cards are a beautiful service (I don’t know about the product yet, I’ve only just ordered). Extremely well conceived and made. re: $5m for photo business cards; my understanding is that this is just the first product/service moo are making and supplying. If they manage to come up with something else as successful, they’ll be well on the way to justifying that investment.
Hello, morons. They aren’t business cards. They’re calling cards.
Moo team has developed a really good interface for a user and ordering process is smooth. What they probably miscalculated (I think) is the demand for this calling card. Since it’s not a business card, the business user is out. It’s not professional, so a university student can’t use it to hand out at job fairs etc. This service is restricted to Flickr users only so that leaves out rest of the world. They offer only 1 size and I believe text is printed on one side and photo on the other. What if user wants to add a logo or few straight or curved lines. Business cards printed through photographic process (as opposed to regular offset or screen printing) have been around for a long time. My first summer job was selling such cards door to door 13 years ago in India. They were liked by car and motorcycle dealerships who could put colorful pictures and next to names of their salesmen and contact info etc. Product manufacturers, Travel agents were others who liked those. But these picture cards never picked up. Till date most business cards have white background. Even colored backgrounds are chosen by very few.
What Moo could add to their offering is -
- more sizes. so one could print let’s say a flier for a dance party or invitation for a kids birthday or a babyshower. team up with evite maybe.
- allow option for cutouts of images and text could be printed next to it. Real Estate agents, lawyers, handymen would love those. note that most of these people are not net savvy and don’t have accounts on flickr so they have to find a way to reach them. maybe kiosks in malls. if they go online to print then why not click to brick!
- offer products for small businesses so they could design brochures, posters, coupons and order them online.
- since online music downloads are so popular and kids burn their own CDs, they could offer covers for CD cases that have their favorite picture.
regarding the 5 million dollar funding, if their margin is let’s say 100% which means it cost them $10 to print 100 cards and they sell for $20, they would have to get 500,000 orders to break even. i know there are billion people on internet but how many on flickr and of those how many want to spend $20 on fancy cards which they can hand out to fancy people.
i say they overestimated demand of their product but then I said the same thing about ringtones on cell phones few years ago
I was wondering… are the people behind MOO the same people behind Pleasure Cards? The cards look real familiar.
I like the idea of different calling cards. Business cards don’t always have the impact they could. I’m using these to hand out at conferences.
The web site needs work. If you navigate back to add/remove photos, your settings don’t reset, but the infomation on zooms is wrong. It loses information navigating between several different screens. The order page can take several retries before the order goes through.
No idea if the order will be correct when it finally prints. Let’s hope so. Wish Qoop offered better card printing services.
finally my order arrived perfectly. Fast delivery and
pretty presentation.
But I have to say I am a little disappointed.
First, between my hundred packs I received someone
else card. With the photography of a baby and her
contact informtion on the back. What happened guys?
Second, the photographs are not croped as I’ve chosen
on the webpage. So, 3 images have faces croped. Not so
nice. And another one has a feet croped. Remember that
flickr is a community of people that likes imagens and
pretend to have their design printed as planned!
Third,
At the back. On the information, i writed:
firstname lastname
FotografÃas
Third,
At the back. On the information, i writed:
Dario Diament
FotografÃas
I put my order in four days ago. It’s only today that they shipped it. I went to the web site to see what was up and there’s no way to check your order status or whether it shipped. You can only call them. Not a very web-oriented experieince. Maybe they were getting their problems straightened out after seeing Dario’s comments.
I’m worried about the cropping now, because scaling information is mislabeled if you go back and deselect or add an image to the set.
I think these are great!! I got 10 for free and I am hooked. I would not use these as business cards unless you are an artist. I think they are little pieces of art. Share. Have fun!
This is Techcrunch.com…
Any complaints/feedback directed at them should instead be sent to the good people at moo.com.
Funding for your business allows your business to do the expensive things that will take it to the next level. It doesn’t just magically make your product better.
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hah, it looks funny, turn my Flickr photos into small business cards? Cool~~
Photo cards are great for personal cards or if you’re an artist. Using them for other types of business seems to far out of the norm.
I’ve been buying business cards from http://www.paperdirect.com for a while now and the quality of the cards are great. Probably the best card stock I’ve seen from an online printing company.