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September 27, 2006

AOL Pictures goes social and it’s not pretty

Marshall Kirkpatrick

33 comments »

The new version of AOL Pictures came out of beta today and it’s thoroughly underwhelming. The new features are basically all the social things that are standard from a Web 2.0 perspective - Public galleries, Ajax, tags, comments and subscriptions - but none of them are done particularly well. They are getting shown up badly by Yahoo!, Webshots and Photobucket.

The new AOL Pictures offers a picture editor but only for Windows, the Ajax response time feels slow, tags are supported but not in a meaningful way (it’s really still all about folders), photo galleries can be named but only and the site is basically no fun to use. The service probably should have stayed in beta for awhile. Did I mention that it’s not very pretty to look at?

The new Yahoo! Photos came out last month and is better, but Flickr is much better still. If you’re going to follow Flickr’s lead, as everyone appears to be doing - at least do it well. Or acquire someone who’s doing something really interesting. Online video editing is the most obvious next direction for video sharing and Yahoo! just bought Jumpcut this morning. There are any number of interesting little photo sharing sites that are at least doing a better job at the state of the art than AOL Pictures. Two off the top of my head are Photoblog.com and BubbleShare (who are doing some very cool stuff). Zooomr is apparently on the market as well.

AOL Video is far more interesting than this, with its mix of commercial and user generated content, long list of movie studio partners and Viiv deal.

Perhaps many AOL customers don’t want anything fancy, but this looks like a half hearted effort to catch up to competitors that I’m guessing won’t be well received.

Update: That the service offers free unlimited storage should have been mentioned here. It was overlooked in my frustration with the UI but it is important.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 27th, 2006 at 3:57 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. wayne lambright

    September 27th, 2006 at 4:56 pm

    Dear AOL leardership team. This is my unsolicited advice. Stop trying to build applications, your not good at it. Do what companies like Yahoo, Microsoft, Fox and Google do, open the checkbook and buy them. If you don’t you’ll be as popular as Altavista.

  2. Tom Vinson

    September 27th, 2006 at 5:54 pm

    Once again, a totally biased review from the Techcrunch crowd. I used it in beta, and it worked pretty good…. I don’t like the yahoo version / updates.

  3. overcast

    September 27th, 2006 at 7:38 pm

    Worked pretty “well”.

  4. Ashish

    September 27th, 2006 at 7:50 pm

    Can we please just let AOL die already?

  5. Mike

    September 27th, 2006 at 8:08 pm

    What is techcrunch’s fascination with zooomr … every other day this site gets a mention or another …

  6. Scott Agastin

    September 27th, 2006 at 8:54 pm

    I’ve been using Flickr for quite some time and while i think it’s a great site, no one I know uses it. As a matter of fact, most of my family and friends don’t even know what Flickr is (sorry, Yahoo). I take my hat off to AOL and anyone else for that matter for providing a way for people outside of Silicon Valley to participate in an online photo community.

  7. Ed Kohler

    September 27th, 2006 at 10:07 pm

    Why no mention of the unlimited storage of original photos? That’s impressive. And inline photo editing? That’s cool too.

  8. Sean Percival

    September 27th, 2006 at 11:34 pm

    I tried to delete my AOL pictures account but they keep charging me. I had to call 10 times. The last call they said they would kill my dog if I cancelled. :(

  9. Chane Steiner

    September 28th, 2006 at 12:31 am

    AOL sucks. Besides AIM, they really don’t even exist anymore and that’s what they get for selling dial-up for $23.95 a month.

  10. Albert Lai

    September 28th, 2006 at 4:01 am

    Thanks for the kind words about BubbleShare Marshall.

    I’m rather surprised at how harsh your review was of AOL’s Photo efforts. While I agree with you that its not a heck of a lot of fun to use (when I was using the beta), its not all that bad. It does take on what some may consider a rather clunky approach (i.e. trying to mimic a traditional desktop user interface), its got a lot of interesting features that bring it above its print centric competitors over at Ofoto and Shutterfly (which also have their strengths).

    Whats interesting is how quickly AOL’s new photo service was out moded by the new Yahoo Photos (the old Yahoo photos really blew, esp. up against the new AOL offering — the new yahoo photos on the flip side is pretty sweet).

    Its funny you should mention the words “no fun to use” — I had just given a web2.0 presentation in Taipei (with your very own Mr. Arrington ;) that covered this very topic. IMHO, there is other category of B2C consumer service that deserves to have “fun” prioritize ahead of all else.

    We’ve worked really hard on making the photo sharing process fun at BubbleShare, I also think Flickr has done a neat job of doing so as well. I’ve yet to see too many other services that have really tried hard at putting much emphasis on making their services fun — and I often think its a “factor” that is often overlooked.

  11. Allen

    September 28th, 2006 at 4:34 am

    In my interview with Ted from Dogster last week, he talked about partnering with Yahoo! or AOL before partnering with Flickr. And why? Because these services are mainstream. Whether they suck or not, my mother will use aol photos before she uses flickr. Flickr is still in the geek arena and until they shed that, it will be hard for the average non-geek to use it.

    http://www.centernetworks.com/.....eo-dogster

  12. landmine

    September 28th, 2006 at 4:53 am

    Totally biased review…unlimited storage with full resolution is the best feature they are providing. Nobody has dared to do so. There are other “common man” features also which makes this a good service. Afterall not everybody on mother earth wants to “share, tag and comment” pictures. You need to understand that AOL is trying to become another yahoo or msn. Its hard but atleast they are trying. In their effort to do so, they have done pretty well with their software and services. Their client is free with lots of content like XM radio and videos.Their web e-mail is very nice (provides IMAP support too). They have given unlimited storage on XDrive. For their efforts and courage I would say “Well done, keep it up”

  13. Eric Date Andersen

    September 28th, 2006 at 6:51 am

    I don’t think it’s too bad. It’s not up to par with my personal favorite flickr.com, but it’s getting there. Shame that it’s made by AOL tho.

  14. Alex Rudloff

    September 28th, 2006 at 8:45 am

    Don’t you think it shouldn’t offer more than flickr? Perhaps even less?

    The goal isn’t to dominate web2.0. I’d imagine the goal is to make a product that is usable by the masses. Take certain features/concepts, water them down to make them “underwhelming”, offer a ton of storage and release/promote to their existing user base.

    I havent played with it yet, but from what I hear, that seems to be the play they’re making.

    This isn’t about “one uping” anyone, it’s about business.

  15. Frank Cefalu

    September 28th, 2006 at 11:06 am

    Marshall, silly review. You evidently dont understand the market Flickr targets and the market AOL targets. The average user on AOL will get confused by the concept of tagging their picture. They won’t know what that means. OF course AOL designed it that way. Come on Man, you have to think why they made the application and for whom. If you assume everyone knows just as much information as you then you’ve never done userability studies as I have. THe knowledge we have about how the web works only compromises 2% - 5% of the population. Do not forget this.

    AOL did a fantastic job period. I hate AOL but for the users they made this for its absolutly perfect. Why does every site have to be rated against Flickr? Whats the purpose? Because it’s Web 2.0? There isn’t even a base or preferred platform for Web 2.0 development yet, even that is still up in the air.

    Thats like me saying oh, the gallery system at the senior system home is newly made, but it isn’t as good as the one 2 advanced developed for Sony Playstation. Senior Citzens some cannot even comprehend nor understand Instant Replay. This example is the same exact thing that is going on here, no matter how incredulous it sounds.

  16. Frank Cefalu

    September 28th, 2006 at 11:09 am

    Marshall, another note, teh design is standard of AOL Applications. If you already hate the design, I don’t think a review is viable of anew application they develop since you have biast opinion of the product already. You make it seem that AOLs design for the application is a stunning surprise.

  17. Marshall Kirkpatrick

    September 28th, 2006 at 11:52 am

    On tagging etc. is unsuited for AOL customers - they make a pretty big deal out of it in this release. I’m just saying that if they’re going to go after these popular features I don’t think they implemented them well.

  18. Murali

    September 28th, 2006 at 11:55 am

    It is sad that a reputed technology update site has such a biased review by people like Marshall Kirkpatrick. Hope Marshall isn’t the one running this site, because I would hate to see the site get ruined.

  19. Frank Cefalu

    September 28th, 2006 at 12:38 pm

    Murali, Just because we disagree with Marshall on a point doesnt going to mak ethe site go down the toliet. I usually like Marshall’s articles. On this one I just happen to differ in opinon. I think your comments are not constructive, nor does it even bring a new point of view to the table. Please remember Murali, Trolling is looked down upon.

  20. Eric S

    September 28th, 2006 at 12:46 pm

    The fact is that AOL Pictures is a FREE service now. They will store ALL your pictures and allow anyone to download them in their FULL size. How many other services do this?

    And better yet…they offer a stand-alone program for Mac OS X that lets you upload photos directly from iPhoto. Any services that offer winblows only support suck in my opinion. Offering support for only the worst OS is not a good idea IMO.

  21. SuperTopher

    September 28th, 2006 at 2:57 pm

    I love the comment that it wouldn’t be that bad if it wasn’t “made by AOL”. What does that mean? What does that tell us? It’s like saying “this is a great song, too bad it’s by ‘N Sync or I would like it”. I-G-N-O-R-A-N-T

    The company is MOOT, or nearly.

    AOL seems to be making an effort to be open, friendly, and fully webified. It’s a shame that we wont even look twice at a company that is trying to reinvent itself.

    I use AOL Pictures. It’s reliable. It’s free. It’s unlimited. It only requires an AIM SN to upload…none to view a shared album. It’s fast. It’s easy. It’s perfect for it’s target audience….which, it does not take a brainiac to figure out is NOT THE FLICKR CROWD.

    Sigh.

  22. AOL Customer Service

    September 29th, 2006 at 11:52 am

    Sean, we also told you that we would kill your dog if you told anybody else that we threatened to kill your dog. I am afraid you have forced our hand in this matter.

    thanks for using AOL!

    AOL Customer Service

  23. Mike H

    October 2nd, 2006 at 7:34 am

    I share photos with relatives via http://www.myfamily.com, which they all like and use regularly. The service is expensive, UI is awful, and has never been upgraded in the four years I’ve used it. I tried switching to flickr, but nobody seemed to like it and Yahoo Photos was too complicated for the grandparents. I’m not sure that AOL Photos will work much better, but it seems like family communities based on photo sharing is an underdeveloped niche. Perhaps AOL could have targeted that a little more.

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