Fashion has long had a place in the Web 2.0 arena. There are online sample sale clubs, social networks around fashion and even fashion microblogging networks. StyleRays is jumping on the bandwagon by launching a microblogging site focused less on the actual fashion and more on style. What’s the difference you ask?
According to StyleRays, the site is focused on how you put clothes together and integrate brands into certain “looks.” Instead of answering Twitter’s question of “what are you doing?”, StyleRays looks to answer the question “what are you wearing now?” On the site, users can upload photos of what they are wearing, then tag the photos with the brands of clothes that they have on and publish their photos. Similar to Twitter, you can follow other users and their photos will appear in your stream. You can also comment on users’ photos and Tweet photos to Twitter and publish links to Facebook as well.
The site is pretty basic and currently doesn’t offer more features than microblogging your style photos. The startup plans to add daily style updates from the users you follow, conduct contests on style and implement a rewards system. The concept is fairly similar to TryMyFashion, a startup that lets users post short messages (just like Twitter—140 characters or less) and photos, videos, etc. about their daily fashion.
Sounds also a bit like coathangr.com which just launched an iPhone app for their service.
coathngr.com looks a very well done community, although, as main difference, we offer the users the possibility to tag brands and products that they are wearing and to follow / be followed by other users.
Actually coathangr allows tagging of each post, and has a follow/unfollow model like twitter’s
(disclosure. I have the app, and was on the beta, not affiliated with the developers.)
My fault, didn’t notice it from a quick look.
Honestly I liked the site and the way they show the activity feed of their users.
It’s great to see other niche microblogging service like coathangr and I am sure that there is a lot of space out there for community like ours
Congrats on the launch Enrico.
coathangr.com also allows users to tag their photos. Tags can be brands or colors or whatever the user wants. For example http://coathang...com/tags/shoes/
And yes we do have an iPhone app so users can snap pics on the go and keep with with their their followers style. The site is also mobile enabled for Pre, Android and iPhone/iPod Touch users that don’t have the app.
Hi Jay,
thanks
! And compliments for Coathangr.
It looks very well done, with a great mobile support. I appreciate in particular your activity feed in the home page.
This sounds exactly like coathangr – http://coathangr.com
@Enrico – coathangr lets you add tags and supports following. It’s kind of like Twitter with pants.
great, another fashion site showing anorexic girls how to wear tight t-shirts..my bet is that most could give a rat’s ass..
Hi nemrut.
Our purpose different. There are microblogging service that host mainly models photos and fashion trends. Our community has the main purpose to invite ANYBODY to share their own style: youngs, geeks, olds, or whatever they are
It would be cool if they had a way to view a diagram of the most popular trends.
Hi nick,
this is a very nifty idea. As a newborn community, we don’t have right now enough data to show trend charts / diagrams, but it surely will be something exiting to implement in the upcoming months
.
Thanks!
StyleRays looks to answer the question “what are you wearing now?”
This sounds like a phone sex.
I completly agree!!!
ROFL
I have to agree – this is kind of lame
The concept as presented here sounds pretty cool. It’s like a user-generated version of “The Sartorialist” blog. (of course, the quality of the photography will be a lot lower)
I’m going to go check it out…
Wonder how Leena chose to cover Stylerays? I mean I’m partial to coathangr cuz, I’ve used it and heard of it, but really, come on. 2 dozen users vs. several hundred? Where’s the news? Why is this worthy of being reported on?
Is there research done, or just whomever gives TechCrunch the best swag or discount or “scoop”?
There’s that journalistic integ…. oh wait nevermind it’s TechCrunch
How does this improve upon http://www.lookbook.nu ?
It seems that they are already the standard for this kind of thing (with a few niche forums here and there). I find the whole thing a bit creepy, some of those girls are 14.
LookBook.nu seems to go after the professional photographer / photo shoot pics. Where coathangr.com and it would seem StyleRays, are more for your everyday person sharing their style.
These are always fun
Rather than creating a whole nother Twitter for Fashion, you can use Fashism.com — which accomplishes much the same thing, but plugs into your Twitter and is designed to give you advice. Better than reinventing the wheel orone’s social network.
This also sounds relatively similar to http://www.weardrobe.com, which is a “what I wore today” community where you choose your own tags and comment on what others are wearing with contests and all. I guess you offer the added option of facebook and twitter. How else will you distinguish yourself and get someone like me, probably your target demographic (woman, mid twenties with a style-focused blog, always ready for more style inspiration and networking opportunities) to sign up for another site?
How else?
For now, we can only rely on new features. We just launched, so our userbase is pretty low
These new features may be “follow me” (as in Twitter and coathangr.com, you can follow and be followed by other users), photo-tagging and, soon, a recommendation engine (once we build up a decent user base).
Krissie, just to specify, http://www.weardrobe.com is an excellent website and we don’t want you to switch from them to us. If you use them and you are happy with them, you should continue using them and help them to grow their community and to improve their services.
Then, you may like StyleRays too. And you may want to use StyleRays as well to join other communities and get different opinions. Or maybe because you like something on StyleRays that you can’t find anywhere else.
But you shouldn’t just join StyleRays only because we give you something more. There will always be something that will give you something. You should choose your preferred community because you like it, because you like the users, the services, the customer support, the innovation, and all the real things that really matter
how does this compare to http://www.stylespot.com ?
Guys, thank you so much for all of your comments. Good ones, funny ones ( “what are you wearing now? This sounds like a phone sex.” – it made my day
) and a great feedback, that we saw on the community as well.
I just wanted to add something: we know that there are fantastic communities out there that are similar, that offer similar features, that have a greater userbase and much older than ours. Actually, we discovered many of them in these days…
We didn’t decide to start StyleRays because it was the innovative, next-generation, killer community on the web (using some usual press release words so much hated by Robin Wauters
).
We decided to start it because we love the idea and because we love to be part of it. Because we love to build something, with our users, that will give hopefully a significant contribute to a great niche.
We do it because we love social network, because I love to build nifty web apps and because Stefania (my wife) loves to make me cry (joking) pointing out all the bugs and design issues
. It is something that we started with our passion and love.
There is no monopoly on this or on that. Everybody can do anything. The users will then decide who deserve their attention.
I love the this. As a developer and designer, I can build whatever I want, with no investments, no backing from venture capitalist, and, if it works really well, great, I will make a life with it. Otherwise, I will jump on another idea. As I did with http://www.agglom.com
And I do this in my free time, spending 2 to 6 hours per evening, keeping my daily job and with no debts.
Should we be blocked by the fact that somebody else built something similar? No, absolutely not. You, as anybody, are free to build something else, somethine better or worse. And you shouldn’t be discouraged by other “competitors” (that are competitors only if YOU see them as competitors. Why can’t they be partner?). You can do something unique, you can improve something that is already out there, or you can just play around with it and experiment it.
This is what we did with StyleRays and what we will continue to do.
As last note, we already have contacted some of the mentioned website with the purpose to discuss eventual partnership. And we are having a great feedback.
Competitors or partners, they are what you think they are
!