I think one of the great things about blogs and rich media is that they allow people to really get to know you and put a face to the things they see or hear. Take Thomas Hawk and Kris Tate, for example. You take any one else, and see what kind of reaction you get after promising, then missing a huge deadline that was publicly made almost a *week* ago (when the update would happen in “hours”), and they might be taken to the outhouse / woodshed / backroom for some old-style bloggish whupass.
Not Zoomr — and not these two gentlemen.
Personally, I don’t really care how long it takes to develop their next product. It could take another month or three. They have other concerns, strategic, financial, and otherwise. But I really couldn’t care less.
And that’s because the product, whatever it may be, will probably be worth it. Their past work with Zooomr is the proof of that.
But the kind of interesting thing that has rescued them from a public denouncement — after raising our hopes up? The fact that these guys are so damn *earnest* and *personable* both through their blogs and through their live streaming feeds.
Heck, I don’t know if half of all the kind of shennanigans that are going on that are preventing the upgrade to Zooomr Mark III are true (although they probably are given the continuous live feed courtesy of UStream.TV), but their accessibility through the Zooomr blog, their transparency through the continuous live feed, and the *story* (or “brand” if you will) behind Zooomr — that of these two guys against huge Web2.0 corporations — is something that you just want to root for.
Now, that’s not to say that they would be completely immune to things — but they’ve been up front with their fans so far, and all of that has been rewarded with nothing but supportive sentiment.
I’m not sure when Zooomr Mark III is coming, but Kris and Thomas can take their time as far as I’m concerned. I’m willing to wait for something great (and unlimited storage) — let’s just hope that it *does* pay off in a way that the community is anticipating.
(because if it doesn’t … woodshed time! — no, just kidding.)
(Or am I?)
May 27th, 2007 at 10:18 pm | Permalink
And this isn’t the first time. they screwed things up before. the last launch was a failure as well. their site goes down infrequently. I still think zooomr has more potential than flickr.
May 28th, 2007 at 12:43 am | Permalink
Keepin’my fingers crossed as well. ;)
May 28th, 2007 at 3:19 pm | Permalink
You’re kidding, right? Hawk burns piles of credibility with each failed launch, usually preceded by a coordinated (but still ham handed) slime campaign against Flickr. He builds buzz like a master, but doesn’t deliver.
And Zooomr’s current version was never remotely usable or friendly in the first place. To overreach for a bazillion new features when core functionality (and capacity) was still a disaster is ridiculous.
Good branding? It’s telling that even a fan of Zooomr forgets that third ‘o’ in the name…
I’m all for someone challenging Flickr’s dominance in this space, but it won’t be Zooomr. It only has half the visibility it does because Hawk makes a career out of taking potshots at Flickr. I guess it works, considering the coverage he gets (when a single “group” within Flickr has more users and photos than the entire Zooomr service)… but in the long run, that’s a losing strategy.
May 28th, 2007 at 3:48 pm | Permalink
[...] the other hand, Tony Hung over at Deep Jive Interests notes how loyal Zooomr’s users are. Filed under: Zooomr @ 12:47 pm [...]
May 28th, 2007 at 9:37 pm | Permalink
After you get caught over-promising, it becomes second nature to ramp down expectations around any future releases. Much better to have people say, “I didn’t see that coming,” versus, “Where’s the beef?”
May 28th, 2007 at 9:54 pm | Permalink
[...] the other hand, Tony Hung over at Deep Jive Interests notes how loyal Zooomr’s users [...]
May 28th, 2007 at 10:05 pm | Permalink
Occasional Links: Photo-sharing Lessons and Questions…
[...]Any other company would have a status page announcing temporary downtime, but Zooomr has engaged their users while working. Theyve featured at times live streaming video of tech-man Kris Tate explaining …
May 30th, 2007 at 8:02 am | Permalink
All in all it is called Zooomr not Zoomr, nor Zumer, nor Zomer :)
Cheers
May 30th, 2007 at 8:18 am | Permalink
Yes yes yes … I forgot to put an extra “o” in zooomr.com ;)