A few days ago I received my October 4, 2005 edition of PC Magazine
in the mail. On the cover at the absolute top was the caption
“BEST PHOTO-SHARING WEB SITES”. Upon reading that on the cover I was
immediately pissed off because I assumed Multiply wasn't covered. If
this was a year ago I would’ve wondered anxiously, “Did they review
Multiply?”. But I know better now. I quickly flipped to the
article and started reading the preamble which included “For this
roundup, we judged sites by how well they let you share photos and by
how many extras they offer.” Interesting. My anger dissipated and
I thought, “hmm, maybe they did cover Multiply.” I then scanned the
sites reviewed…twice…could not find Multiply… and got upset again.
When reading the cursory reviews of the sites I determined that Multiply
compared favorably in terms of our photo sharing features to all the
sites mentioned. As far as “extras they offer” though, Multiply in my
not so humble opinion blows everyone else away. Some examples:
1.
Of the ten sites reviewed only one allows uploading of video in
addition to photos. (Considering that the same digital cameras that
take pictures also shoot video I am surprised this wasn't a more
important criteria.)
2. Only two allow
categorization by tagging (and neither of these are the one that offers
video, and one of these doesn’t offer photo printing).
3. Only one has integrated blogging tools (and it isn’t one of the three above).
4. None allow you to share music or links.
5. None allow you to share with your social network.
6.
Most importantly, none provide the integration of photo sharing
with a social-network driven message board that facilitates turning
photo albums into conversations, which is really what sharing is all
about.
So, considering the above I can only think of three
reasons why Multiply wasn’t considered for this round-up. First, maybe
PC Magazine simply never heard of Multiply, or second, they don’t
consider us a photo sharing site. But in the January 14 issue of PC
Magazine, it was written in a review of Multiply that
Multiply affords you a type of social interaction that you can't get with typical blogging or photo-sharing services. Clearly they’ve heard of us, and that quote also implies that they consider us a photo-sharing service.
My
assumption then is reason #3, PC Magazine doesn’t appreciate the degree
to which we’ve executed on building a truly convergent product. Since
we’re not
just a photo-sharing site, we’re not up for
consideration as one of the best photo-sharing sites despite the items
enumerated above.
The lack of appreciation for convergence
isn’t just limited to PC Magazine. Just take a look at the blogging and
press coverage of Flickr and Del.icio.us, two darlings of the
Technorati crowd. For the most part, Flickr just lets you tag photos
and look through strangers’ photos, and, Del.icio.us just lets you tag
links and look through strangers’ links. Both sites can be considered
inventive, but also extremely simple. So simple in fact, that one of
our developers burped, and now you can tag your content on Multiply. If
you’re a Multiply user and not familiar with tagging check out this
overview on how to use them.
It
seems that because Multiply lets you tag your photos, video, blog
entries, music, and links, we’re guaranteeing ourself less coverage
than a site whose sole existence is letting you tag one type of
content. That’s a shame because convergence is something that users
really appreciate. In some of our users’ words rather than mine:
I
much prefer Multiply because I have my own website, journal, photos,
etc. all in one. I don't need to login to a billion other websites to
check each of these.
I wouldn't use anything other than Multiply
because the technologies would be spread across multiple web-sites and
that's a lot more hassle.
I had searched endlessly for a site
that offered photo albums, journals etc. over a period of months and
found nothing comparable.
I like how Multiply puts them together in one. It's convenient not to have to sign in to multiple sites.
I have not seen anything as comprehensive as this before.
Nothing compares to Multiply because everything is in one place.
I
don't like having to log into a separate site for every single thing I
want to do. It's much easier to have things in one place, and of the
"one stop" sites out there, Multiply is the best implemented.If
you were to ask any of these users what the best photo-sharing web site
is, they would say Multiply because of its convergence, the same
convergence that excludes us from being considered one of the best
photo-sharing web sites by PC Magazine. This is what I refer to as the
convergence disconnect and the cause of this disconnect can be
described in one word: convenience.
Consumers like convergent products because they provide convenience. Take my
Treo 600
for example. Is the phone as small and sleek and comfortable in my
pocket as the tiniest cell-phones out there? No. Is it as easy to move
MP3s from my computer to the Treo as it is to a dedicated MP3 player?
No. Does the convenience of being able to carry my cell phone, PDA, a
couple hours of tunes, and a web-browser in one device make up for the
sacrifices? Yes, many times over. It's the same thing with Multiply. As
per the quotes above, consumers like being able to log into one site,
not many, because it is much more convenient.
Convergence is not
convenient, however, for journalists that cover technology. The number
of sites that have photo sharing in some capacity is probably ten times
that of those that do nothing but photo sharing. It's more convenient
to focus on the severely limited group. Limiting the scope is an easy
way to limit the amount of time spent researching and reviewing sites,
thus in turn increasing profit. The decision may be good business, but
I also believe it does a disservice by not informing readers of their
best options.
