Could There Be Such A Thing As A flickr/Zooomr Killer Application?
Flickr and Zoomr surely are two of the most popular photo hosting social networks (how’s that for a buzzword : repeat it after me photo hosting social network?)
What differentiates those two sites from other image hosting platforms, like photobucket, is not only their community, but also that both applications managed it to stay primarily photo sites.
Other platforms very often serve as image hoster and free bandwidth provider, but Zooomr and flickr both have almost exclusively photo focused communities. Surely you see the occasional screen shot, but it is all about our photos we want to show. And not host the background of our newest blog design or our MySpace profile.
Does this make both communities untouchable in their niche or could there be such a thing as a flickr killer application? I think the killer app already lurks in the background. And above all, the possible killer application even isn’t a photo site.
When squirl.info launched some months ago, I think one of the most powerful new social web services saw the daylight. Not only stuffed with many Web2.0 buzzwords elements such as groups, commenting, tags, AJAX and RoR, squirl also brought many different web services together in one. Finally you can share all your collections with only one user account, at only one site even.
But that is not all. Combined with a great community creativity squirl could grow into THE sharing community online.
With a little imagination people could soon start submitting their photos and tag them as a collection. Because tags are the evil of the Web 2.0.
Tags are great not only for SEO, but also for categorizing. And they are the evil of the Web 2.0.
Why are tags evil? Because too many people do not use tags correctly. Seen Live is NO correct tag for music, nor is awesome. But still it are 2 of the more popular tags at last.fm.
So what will keep squirl members from submitting their dog pictures and make a collection of [pictures of] their dog? The upload quota of only 1.5MB a picture?
Or does squirl really have the potential to be a killer?
I think squirl is a real killer application. Add 2 portions of guts, one attractive pricing plan1 and a healthy dose of API.
There you go : lots of new domain names ending in rl over the next two years.
Did I tell you I sometimes have weird nerd geek thoughts? I think I did.
I will regularly feature my thoughts on new or popular web applications. Share your opinions in the comments.
1 I consider the actual free plan too restricted to make the service really attractive for new members. 200 free items is not enough IMHO, especially not spread over 3 collections. I’d rather see the possibility to add more items every month.
[tags]Jack Of All Blogs, flickr, Zooomr, squirl, tags, buzzwords, social network, photo sharing, web applications, image hosting, Web 2.0, Web20[/tags]
What do you think?