Do we really need another outlet for photo sharing? Shutterfly thinks so.
The photo-printing service, best known for publishing custom calendars, albums, posters, and other photography-infused goods, announced on Wednesday the launch of "Shutterfly Gallery," a social network that is sort of like a Flickr for the scrapbooking set.
Shutterfly Gallery is the first major project launched since the publicly traded company acquired Nexo Systems, a Web site personalization start-up. Nexo's technology has provided the technology for the new social-networking arm of Shutterfly.
Shutterfly Gallery encourages "storytelling" (see, I told you it would appeal to scrapbook lovers) through the creation and sharing of online photo books that can be themed and customized with backgrounds, text, and tags. Members can also rate one another's albums (Ouch! "Scott and Nancy: The First 2 Months" has only two stars!), create profiles, and embed their photo books into Web sites or blogs.
"Our customers are inspiring and enthusiastic storytellers, and have asked for a way to share their stories with other customers and the general public," Jeffrey Housenbold, president and CEO of Shutterfly, said in a statement Wednesday. "Now we are providing them more ways to tell their stories."
Cat lovers, camera-happy vacationers, and proud parents of the world, rejoice!
If you like online groups but can't be bothered to check in on them to see what's going on all the time, you might want to give Nexo a look. We've covered this strong groups platform before, and we think it competes effectively with Yahoo Groups, save for the fact that Yahoo has many times Nexo's users. The Nexo team continues to work on its product. The latest update is tight e-mail integration. Now, not only can you have Nexo ping your e-mail when your groups are updated (Yahoo also does this), but you can contribute to your groups from e-mail without having to go the site at all.
Users can now respond to new forum posts and polls directly in e-mail. This is a handy feature, and if you're trying to increase participation in a group, it could help a lot.
Unfortunately, not all features are enabled for two-way e-mail. The Q&A feature is still site-only, for example. That is, users can get e-mail notification when there are new questions, but they have to go to the site to answer. Also, while we loved Nexo back in February, its design is showing its age in November. While Nexo is a very capable group manager, it is daunting to navigate, and its look and feel is not up to today's standards.
Nexo could use a sugar daddy to rescue it from obscurity. It's a good product but it needs some new duds, and the exposure that a big online brand could bring it.
Sample Nexo site
(Credit: Nexo)Pitched as "MySpace for groups" at Demo 07 last week, Nexo is a new Web publishing service that makes it gratifyingly easy to create a site for a club, team, or group of any sort.
There are a lot of easy ways to get a free site on to the Web right now, from MySpace (not a bad solution if you want to advertise your group to 40 trillion teenagers) to Wiki services like Wetpaint, but Nexo's focus on group dynamics pays off. The site is a good option if what you need is to keep a group of people informed and in touch with each other.
Once you set up the framework for your group site by adding elements like a home page, a calendar, and a forum, you can then invite people in your group to participate and contribute to the site.
It sounds humdrum, but Nexo has a good blend of structure and openness. For example, it's easy to set up a simple-to-use photo page, and it's also simple for anybody in the group (who has permission) to add to it, either by uploading their own pictures or by pointing to their Flickr images. Videos work in a similar way.
Nexo supports many item types.
(Credit: Nexo)There are nice little Web 2.0 touches in Nexo that delighted me when I tried the service. Two examples: First, comments or journal entries that people leave on a page are updated in real-time for all to see; you don't have to reload a page. Second, the photo upload tools gives you a quick zoom-and-crop option when you add pictures. It's a little thing, but it makes adding a portrait to your profile page much easier.
If you want to set up a family site, you might want to use Vox, which is based on a blogging platform. But anyone who works with a group or club that could use its own Web site would be wise to check out Nexo.
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