MyFolio is a brand new social network in public beta that takes another crack at building an online community service for artists and creatives looking to share their art and converse about it with like-minded people. The startup quietly launched the website a month ago and is entirely bootstrapped by its founder Mustafa Lazkani.
In terms of features, MyFolio covers every basic need for a social network to be useful for its creative audience. Artists can upload and tag media or files for a variety of categories ranging from animation, concept art, films, paintings to music and photography, create a portfolio, manage bookmarks and keep on top of internal messages from other users. Registered users can indicate of their work can be viewed in public or kept private, if it is work in progress or not, and which copyright applies to the work.
Public portfolios (here’s mine) look rather spartan even if they can be personalized with custom colors, header and text, so I suggest MyFolio to do something about if they want to make artists want to show off their work by spreading links to those pages.
MyFolio is free up to 1 GB of storage, which I imagine will quickly prove insufficient for many artists, but offers a paid version at $2/month which removes ads from the portfolios and comes with 2 GB of storage (more isn’t possible at the moment).
I’m generally skeptical when it comes to niche social networks. I think the large majority of new community sites have too much of an uphill battle to fight against established social platforms – particularly when you need to create yet another account for your profile – and I also believe that if there isn’t a proven social network for a certain niche by now, there probably never will be. And if there is already one, it’s going to prove very difficult for a new entrant to get a piece of the action.
That said, MyFolio looks and feels nice and offers all the whistles and bells that are to be expected for this type of service, so who knows if it will hit the sweet spot with its target audience. MyFolio will have to compete with other art-related social networks like deviantART, Carbonmade and FoundMyself but also with traditional photo sharing services like Flickr, which can also easily be used for social networking within an artist community.
Actually is my first choice deviantART, but I will try MyFolio, looks interesting, too.
deviantart is the best network for artists!
simple anb beaty.
I will not say the best. I will say is the biggest and one of the oldest.
DeviantArt spins around popularity (tons of friends) and oldness, is not about art anymore.
This is a great looking website. Another place for a starving artist to be found.
imagine every time having to spell this domain out verbally when referring others. whom ever created that homepage and logo has zero artistic talent. other than that i like the concept.
Must be very hard to spell out a 7 letter word
You can check this one http://cggaller....itsartmag.com/ older, and top quality artworks, with customizable homepage, external vote codes, virtual flipping book, ….
not open the website, sorry…
???
Works fine for me on any pages, like this one : http://cggaller...ndex.php?page=2
Anyway, it’s not really the same kind of website as it’s dedicated to 2D and 3D only.
Its not really well made, it looks like an old website… i really prefeer using things like Ameets dot com but is still only in spanish.
deviantArt is just fine for me =)
There is also http://www.talicious.com, a talent community.
very cool, i try this…
I’m a bit partial to http://www.artbistro.com myself
I also like http://www.shockfolio.com – in addition to being a social network, you can also get other stuff like flash websites and other bells and whistles.
I just checked it out, looks really cool. Like a youtube for artists!
The leader in the folio sector is called Behance Network – http://www.behance.net/
I disagree about your comments regarding niche social networks. I believe that people will soon grow tired of MySpace and Facebook simply because they are too big for their own good. I mean, do a search on either platform for artists, and millions upon millions of results will appear. No one is equipped to crunch through all of that data. I think the niche network is why applications like Ning are so popular. Not only that, CPM rates for niche networks are dramatically higher than general networks, so you can actually make money on them.
I have to agree with you Shane. I see 2009 to be year for niche networks. Already my facebook account is filled with all types of connections. Don’t even talk about my LinkedIn (one of the spamiest website, I would say)
But I also understand Robin point of view that people are going to be tired of creating new profiles and logging in to multiple sites. I think niche sites that is smart enough to utilize different API’s. With FB connect, Google Open Friend and Open Social, sites can easily take advantage of that and make it easy to user to login and create a profile. And I think these sites will make it big.
what mad them spike rapidly last august?
Artists communities are fine, but I think artists also need better tools to show and distribute their work online in a more practical and professional way. Flickr and alikes can help you getting noticed, but once you need to present your work professionally to clients most sites are too clunky. We at Viewbook try to solve this problem by creating tools to present work in a clean and elegant way with flexible portfolio pages and multi-purpose galleries, and at the same time give you tools to distribute your work online for example by publishing your galleries to for example facebook. I think the true challenge finally lies in integrating the best of tools and (community) websites.
Viewbook is $9 or $19 a month. Heard of starving artists?? lol
what is that considered pricey?
-Jim
http://www.movi...nlineforum.com/
(just getting started so check it out)
Some think it’s price others think it’s cheap:
http://www.meet...read/4463081/0/
Actually my favourite is Ameets.com, for the moment is small enough to be relevant and the quality of the works in quite high end!
Concerning the “bigger players” I prefere devianart rather than behance….so easy!
Hey Nacho, why do I get the feeling that you are really Jesus (person posted above)? Whats next, a post from Sombrero about the same dinky website known as ameets?
Being the founder of 2 artist social networks; http://www.mojizu.com and http://www.sabet.tv, I know first hand that giving creatives a place to share their talent and thrive is more gratifying than any amount of money. Niche CPM’s are pretty good, but I don’t think Art Communities are really that niche anymore. I feel personally that there is too many of them with no niche.
Mojizu worked because it focused on Character Designers and their work!
Whether MyFolio takes off or not will have to do with Moose’s reach and effort. If there is nothing different here vs. let’s say some other small network, then I’d have to say it’s going to stay small. But who knows, maybe Moose is doing this for love!
Moose, If you read this…
I like the design, and the identity is really well done. I feel that the homepage could be way more interactive and dynamic. It doesn’t draw me in right now. Give me a reason to sign up- something different..something exciting..
I wish you the best!
Ali
Let me translate your comments: FAIL
I’m working with http://www.thesmalls.com which is a social network and showcase for creatives in general and filmmakers in particular.
We have monthly short film screenings in New York (’The Can’) as well as competitions in London such as The Comedy Smalls sponsored by Paramount Comedy.
I think “art” is a good niche of social network as artist don’t mind open a new account to show off their masterpiece to get one more chance to attract new fans.
I also want to start a niche social network of people who like playing sudoku. But I have no idea how many people like sudoku.
Here’s a really good review of how social networks are helping the creative world (the big ones as well as the niche).
http://laterala...-for-creatives/
The concept isn’t bad, really, but there’re few issues with it.
1. Too many ads on portfolio page. I can’t really imagine an artist who will tolerate such a horrible amount of (not his) ads on his portfolio. $24/year for no-ads option? What’s the point? Hosting will cost me same money, but I’ll be able to do my portfolio the way I like, not the way they want.
2. Mixing up portfolio and social stuff… OK, maybe it looks like a great idea, but I don’t think it’ll work – again, folio is very individual thing, and artists (especially those who are seriously dedicate to their form of art – which isn’t me) are individualists and the last thing they need is huge amount of amateurs leaving their (trashy) comments on his portfolio.
3. Overall – design isn’t very good and intuitive, and I’d say it’s not too sleek either.
To conclude, it may work – but personally for me (very inspired yet still amateur photographer) this thing will not work. Portfolio is personal, not social – period.
Totally agree. Portfolio should be first (personal) then you should have the *option* to go social with your portfolio. And have the possibility to distribute / embed into different networks if you like. That would be nice.
If you are looking for the combo niche social network and caricatures, I’d recommend Wittygraphy. Seems like the caricaturists have begun the gathering at that website. A lot or fine caricatures and a lot of fun to be had.