Zooomr, one of my favorite web apps gets a much anticipated makeover. They’ll be down for 48 hours as they make the transition, but the new stuff showing up is worth the wait.
Among the new stuff in the release (there’s lots), I love the fact that you actually get freaking unlimited storage! No more worries about when you’re goanna hit the 4 Gig mark, though I think it wouldn’t make much of a difference to their bottom line data usage. And, no they won’t be moving your photos to archive if you’re not pro or cross a limit. I emailed Thomas Hawk about it, and here’s what I got:
Unlimited means unlimited. We hate limits.
Here’s what Flickr give free account users:
- 100 MB monthly upload limit (5MB per photo)
- 3 sets
- Photostream views limited to the 200 most recent images
- Post any of your photos in up to 10 group pools
- Only smaller (resized) images accessible (though the originals are saved in case you upgrade later)
Here’s what Zooomr gives free account users:
- no monthly upload limit.
- no set limits
- no 200 image limit
- no group limit
- your originals are saved in the same size you upload them and always accessible to you.
Our open API will be very similar to Flickr. Users will need to request and receive a key in order to use it. But this will not be hard and will be open.
Also, note that Flickr will delete your account if you are not active for a set number of days. I’ll ask thomas if the case is the same with Zooomr. (Scroll down for an update.) So far, they’re competing with Flickr, and this release aims to even the playing ground and might even give Kris and co an advantage!
Another innovation(I can call this one an innovation), is that you can actually sell your photos! And, you get a whopping 90% of the selling price, which is quite cool. Just remember that you’re now competing with Getty to have your photo up on the next article that shows up on Cricinfo…
Also, he’s got 250 new improvements and features, which look impressive.
And, I also hope he fixes the speed issues. The first reaction I got from folks when I intro them to Zooomr is: sloooowww….
The new release should be up in a few hours time, so not much waiting to do now.
Update: Thomas Hawk, the CEO, emailed me back, saying that they won’t be deleting any of the free accounts. And, as of now, the only difference between Pro accounts and free accounts is that Pro accounts won’t have ads in them, though there are also future plans for Pro-only features. Here’s what the CEO said:
We like the idea of no limit photo sharing free for everyone. Also we really want Zooomr to be a global photo sharing site for the whole world and there are lots of people in the world taking amazing and beautiful photographs who can’t really afford to pay for Pro accounts.
Over time we are optimistic that by collecting a modest cut of stock photography sales that we will be able to keep the site free or everyone. We also think that by passing along 90% of stock photo sale proceeds (the highest that we know of of any stock company) that we can create an outlet where people all over the world can use their photography to make a little money. Right now the world of stock photography is closed off. If you are a Pro and shoot for Corbis or Getty then you get paid. Everyone else goes to microstock where they sell your photo typically for on average about $1.30 and (at least the leading agency) pay you 20%. We want to change all of that. Two guys going against a $2 billion industry won’t be easy, but I think there are a lot of photographers out there who could support us in this and that drives us forward.
Rock on Thomas and Kris, and more power to you!
Guest Post by Yuvi Panda, who blogs here and thinks of himself as a developer.
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