Piczo, a social network with a strong teenage following, has launched a new developer platform that allows users to quickly generate content from partner sites while helping brands increase their exposure on the network. Piczo has never reached near the popularity of mega-networks like MySpace and Facebook, but it continues to draw a sizable audience, primarily from the teenage demographic. In conjunction with the platform, the site is also launching “Piczo Powered Pages”, which effectively integrate the social network’s features into other sites. Users can try one out at eSPIN, a social network owned by Hearst Magazines that has already made use of Piczo’s featureset.
Included in the API are three new features: “Post to Piczo”, “Create a Page”, and “Piczo Toolbar”. The “Post to Piczo” function allows users to post items to their Piczo accounts from external partner sites, which include Meebo, Widgetbox, and Clearspring. “Create a Page” allows users to use pre-designed templates to generate new Piczo pages containing partner content. Finally, developers will now be able to partner with Piczo to become part of the page editor’s toolbar, which the site says allows them to become an “integral part of the Piczo product.”
Unfortunately, this new platform doesn’t share much in common with the dev platforms seen on Facebook and MySpace. Instead, it’s more like a handicapped API that doesn’t have much flexibility. The site may well expand this functionality over time, but for now, don’t expect to see a developer community spring up around Piczo.
That said, the new features should help make Piczo more competitive with the larger, more popular social networks like Hi5, Facebook, and MySpace. ComScore data shows the site slipping off over the last year, dropping from 12.9 million users in April 2007 to 8.4 million globally in June 2008. However, the site has seen impressive growth in the United States, growing from 655 thousand to 1.4 million in the same time span.
The front page of Piczo makes me fear for humanity.
“Make whatever”
“Create glitter”
*Cringe*
This is as ridiculous as launching a virtual world for teenagers or younger, which we’ve seen too much of in the past few weeks (thanks TC) . Let’s be clear, most kids don’t make any money. Do you really expect the parents to sit over their kids’ shoulders and encourage this type of brain kill? I just don’t see a smart parent wanting to spend a penny on a “virtual world” service or a social network for kids. Even if this happens to be the next thing, it won’t be long before there is an open source version of it that is much better, and probably safer.
If you are a responsible parent you would keep your kid away from all this crap.
Congratulations to Jeremy Verba and the Piczo crew! Will, I take it you were never a 12-year-old girl in a previous life.
Whatever your objection, at least Piczo is making an innovative and safe product for kids.
I’ll give you that.
John Smith… chill out buddy. They may be on to something… and if they’re offering services and api (even if it’s not full fledged) and expands their user base… then good for them.
As people continue to specialize and find tighter niches services like this will be born. Some parents will decide that they want their kids to spend resources and on a site like this. If they find value in it what’s so wrong?
I believe in technology that moves the world. This is pure vaporware. Thankfully, not as bad as some tween virtual world services we have seen.
Integrating the social network’s features into other sites is not so frequent though such service is freely available. I am not sure how the teenager will find it.
espin link is broken, it leads to epsin.com
Please correct the espin Link : http://www.espin.com/ instead of epsin.com
Thanks for the great job.
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this is a hail mary because piczo isn’t doing well from things I’ve read. They used to have some buzz and used to run around conferences with their heads held high. that ain’t happening anymore. add them to the deadpool!
The url mess-up for espin.com (you have epsin.com) is hillarious. What happened to good old copy/paste and checking your links. I really am going to miss the old media - because they did actually copyedit and proofread their stuff. Don’t get me wrong, I like the reporting that goes on here - but basic proofreading seems to be a lost art.
Do you guys think there is any sort of market opportunity to create a teen social network that will perform better than this company but also not be destroyed by a myspace? Thoughts.
Ron
http://www.readtheanswer.com/index.php?RTA=web2
hi, andar here, i just read your post. i like very much. agree to you, sir.
hey, guys piczo is a pretty cool site and you dont get in nearley as much drama on here as you do on myspace and facebook lol bye