Currently, the Internet’s better mousetrap is the photo sharing website. The success of Flickr.com, now owned by Yahoo!, is loved and lamented by users and developers alike for its usability and its limitations. Michael Arrington believes he’s found the better phototrap, an assertion some call premature, in Zooomr.com.
Zooomr is “Flickr on steroids,” says Arrington, referring to a website built in just three months time by 17-year-old wiz Kristopher Tate, offered in 15 languages with a Google Maps integration that allows geographical information to accompany photos. Zooomr includes audio annotation, a built-in Flash player, and allows logins from Gmail, Meetro, and LiveJournal (among others).
“I hope that somehow this next wave of Photo Sharing sites reaches the core of photos and uses that metadata to help people find each other,” said Tate, who also plans to add a service to back up photos to .zip file.
Arrington’s praise of the website must have caused enough buzz to create traffic jams, as pulling up Zooomr informs visitors the site is being moved to another datacenter.
But Arrington’s titled admonition “Flickr has some catching up to do,” has met scorn as an overhyping of a brand new interface that has yet to be fully tested. Further, it has a long way to go to overtake King Flickr.
Burningbird.net’s Shelley Powers thinks the Techcrunch crowd is more impressed by the youthful speed of the creation more than the creation itself.
“Let’s be blunt,” comments Powers, “you’re less impressed with the site than you are with the fact that the creator is 17. Yet, he’s using well known techniques already pioneered by other companies and creators (sorry, most of whom are older).”
The pointed comments came after recognizing other photos sites with similar attributes. Though illustrated in a more powerful way, Power’s comments are akin to others who call the site a “blatant rip-off of Flickr.”
We may examine it in a more honest way by acknowledging that Japan didn’t invent the car, or the VCR for that matter. To be even more intellectually honest, as the better mousetrap concept indicates, improving on past innovations is not copying, it’s progress, unless you truly believe in the reality of things original. If so, you’d be in a different camp than King Solomon, who decided about 3,000 years ago, there was “nothing new under the sun.”
Once Tate adjusts to his sudden notoriety and prepares his website for higher traffic, only time will tell us if Zooomr carries a greater promise (and a better phototrap) than Flickr. And Flickr, in the meantime, may very well add a few choice features to preempt its competition.
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