PhotoShow Goes Social With New Version
Marshall Kirkpatrick
10 comments »
The company SimpleStar released a new version of its PhotoShow product Friday and brought the popular photo and video sharing service up to speed with a number of developments pioneered by early adopters you’re more likely to have read about here on TechCrunch. The service now supports the social sharing and online categorization that’s typical of other media sharing services; the change is comparable to what Yahoo! Photos did last summer when it changed for a largely private service into a much more Flickr inspired phenomenon. Photoshow combines sharing online with a desktop application for managing your media.
The most notable thing about SimpleStar, though, is the company’s incredible acumen in business development. The company reports an amazing 20,000 new installations of its desktop software every day, thanks to partnerships with companies like Comcast, Walgreen’s and Wolf Camera. SimpleStar received $6 million in funding from Venrock a year and a half ago.
There’s a certain flavor to PhotoShow, consisting of the product’s price point ($40), Windows-only desktop application, being in bed with big cable companies and ISPs and the photos of software in a cardboard box all over its website despite being available primarily by download. That particular flavor makes me want to turn my snobbish Web 2.0 nose up at the company - but the fact of the matter is, they know how do get the job done.
PhotoShow monetizes the initial product, an inexplicable upgrade for $20 that apparently consists of a number of graphic themes for your photos (”Kids, Love and Patriotic Theme Packs” etc.), DVDs of your media and anything else it can think to charge users for.
SimpleStar says its PhotoShow service appeals not to early adopters but the the last 2/3 of the adoption curve. It appears to be successful so far in reaching out to that market; though Alexa does indicate that the humble Photoblog.com gets 4 times as much traffic as PhotoShow.com - that’s probably less relevant because of PhotoShow’s reliance on desktop software.
I personally find the service patronizing and obnoxious, but perhaps that says more about me than it does PhotoShow. There’s no doubt that the company deserves recognition for its large partnerships and decision to add more social features to the service with this newest upgrade. It may be a prime example of the strategy many people recommend - focus on making money, let the early adopters take the biggest risks and implement what sticks with the market later.
Marshall Kirkpatrick is the Director of Content at SplashCast and will be assisting with TechCrunch while Michael Arrington travels.
I saw that this article had zero comments for a long time, and I decided to fix this.
The reason that it had no comments, is because it’s about a completely uninteresting and redunant product. I know a lot of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Perhaps as many as Mike Arrington. Which brings me to the next question: why has this article been written?
I heard of many interesting startups and their founders that have submitted their sites to Techcrunch. What did they get in return? Nothing. Not even “not at this time”, or some other corporate-aspirational gibberish response.
It looks like Techcrunch has switched gears: it started to write either about “proven” stuff, or about people/compaiunes linking to which may benefit Mike Arrington. I wonder if a direct “sponsorship” in some form is involved.
Is this post going to be deleted?
Bill,
I think the concept of the post was to act as a reminder to us all that desktop software still has numbers…. and that “web only” is not the sole way forwards. I still think people (by which I mean average computer user) like to have a tangible good in return for money spent… it may be a redundant product (I am not their target market I guess) - but obviously it is selling - which makes it a successful product.
As for getting services / sites on Techcrunch…. having had one app that I am responsible for reviewed here a couple of months back…. I would say that those that contact MA for a mention probably won’t be mentioned! (I didn’t)
Alex:
I think it’s up to MA what he thinks deserves mentioning in TC, but the point is that he does not bless those entrepreneurs that submit sites to him even with a short reply. This certainly does not cultivate love. Or maybe there are so many websites created everyday, that his mailbox is full?
I know one team that has a website of 800,000 registered users and rapidly growing, and another with 500,000 users: he did not bless them with a reply. Some very famous people did, but he did not.
And then he writes about this obscure startups with 2000 registered users… There must be some other motivation involved here.
Bill, Michael Arrington didn’t write this post and I’m not sure you read it very closely.
I don’t get it … why not just use emule or torrent clients?? Why would anyone go after this service?? …
… and anything else it can think to charge users for??? Why should I buy this??
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Oh my, sounds like a lot of sour grapes coming from people who didn’t get their pet company featured.
Thanks Marshall for profiling SimpleStar and PhotoShow. I’ve been following this company for years. Back when they had a Mac product, around 5 years ago, I created several Photoshows that are still running on my site. One of the reasons for this company’s success is that the engineers developing the product focused on the wants and needs of a market segment that wasn’t them. The developers were young, hip 20-something software guys. Early on their market revealed itself to be mostly middle-aged women with kids. Yep it may be cheesy, and yes it isn’t nearly so cool as some web 2.0 mash-up, but it has a lot of customers who clearly like the product. There is something to be said for following the money, eh?
I’m with Alex and Elise - I have to say I read and enjoy TechCrunch frequently, and I enjoyed this article as a distinctive change of pace! Sounds like this company has its marketing house in order: targeting the 2/3 post-early-adopter market, partnering with institutions that market knows and trusts, emphasizing the boxed software to show they are a *real* company and not one of a dozen startups in the space with uncertain future, providing the desktop tool to manage both online and offline … while it may be unattractive to those of us on the bleeding edge, you gotta give them their marketing props. And it *is* hard to argue with 20,000 copies a day!
Sounds like a nifty product. The 20,000 installs a day is pretty amazing. Though I wonder how many of those are automatically deployed by major cable companies etc.?
Marshall:
This is Jay Tannenbaum, VP of Marketing at Simple Star. Thanks for posting about the launch of the latest version of our integrated PhotoShow service. I’d like to take a moment to fill in a few details about PhotoShow that maybe you didn’t have room for in your post.
At the core of our product is a very robust slideshow authoring and sharing platform. We are pioneers in this space since back in 2001 with the first release of PhotoShow. Our users have been sharing PhotoShows on the web since then and in a more social context since 2005 on PhotoShow.net. We brand PhotoShow.net for our partners, companies like Nero, Walgreens, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable as well as our own Simple Star version. In January the aggregate traffic of all these properties including PhotoShow.com as measured by Nielsen was almost 1.4 million unique users.
As you pointed out, almost 20,000 people actually install our desktop software every day – 5 million a year. A lot of this is from viral growth and word of mouth as well as extensive partner, OEM and retail distribution. Our customers seem to like a fast, easy to use way to make and share multimedia. It is so easy to use that it is bundled by Fisher Price with a digital camera tailored for pre-schoolers. But it is solid enough for our partners to choose as their brands’ persistent desktop presence. They respect our broad distribution, appreciate solid engineering and that we sweat the details. Like that we have taken the time to license great music from artists like Miles Davis and Thievery Corporation so everyone can share their memories in a cool way – hassle free.
Many of us at Simple Star are veteran Web 1.0 survivors. We started this company based on solid business principles. We wanted to create something more than a one trick mash up or a slideshow widget. Our goal was to make it easy for anyone to turn their memories into amazing movies they could share and enjoy anywhere – on the web, PC or TV. We’re doing it. But don’t take my word for it. Make a PhotoShow at PhotoShow.com or try our software for free at http://www.simplestar.com.
Jay