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SnapFoo.com or TwitPic.com Dilemma

I am a conflicted person tonight.  There are two picture blogging options in my life now and I am unsure of who to give my loyalty.

It all started back on 17 Dec 2007 when I discovered SnapFoo.com – as I recall I came across it because I encountered @williamsba on Twitter.  He had mentioned SnapFoo in a Tweet and I asked about it and he immediately sent me an invite.  Since then I have posted 174 pictures on my profile there and I think my “Foo” has been very strong.

All was well until two days ago on 09 Apr 2008.  I am still unsure exactly how TwitPic.com came to my attention – wait – it is coming back to me now.  I had just updated to the latest version of twhirl which has become my preferred Twitter client. Included in the latest version was integration with an application/website called TwitPic – so naturally my curiosity carried me to the website and I was quite intrigued.  I signed up for an account and started to Tweet a few pics.

Both sites have great functionality and have many things in common such as uploading pictures either directly through the web interface or via email (my preferred method when I am out and about on my BlackJack mobile phone).  Both play nice with Twitter and send links to your Twitter stream when a photo is posted.

It is at this point that a few things start to stand out between the two services.  For instance, TwitPic posts replies/comments on your photo back to your Twitter stream – as well as any comments you make on photos get posted on both the persons stream who submitted the photos and who ever made the comment.  Currently SnapFoo has a space for comments and you can get notified via email when someone does make a comment but it does not insert those comments into your Twitter stream.

TwitPic provides feedback on your photos page of how many people have clicked through from your Twitter stream to view the picture.  Statistics and feedback – a very nice feature.

All in all either service is very functional and provides you the ability to provide visual cues to your Twitter followers.  I am thankful to have small dilemma’s in my life – it means we have great choices out there and a little competition in the same service arena means better products and services down the road.

Great work on both sides!

You can keep up with my Twitter stream and pictures from both SnapFoo and TwitPIc by following me at @WindowsObserver

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SnapFoo Beta – Mobile Photo Blogging

With mobile phone cameras getting better and better it was only a matter of time before someone came on the scene with a website to Mobile Photo Blog your day.  You can already send text messages to keep your Twitter status updated so everyone that follows you can keep up with you no matter where you are in the world – and now SnapFoo arrives on the scene to provide you with a means to photo blog your day via your cell phones camera.  Now cell phones are not the only way to send photos to your SnapFoo profile – you can also email them.

The process is very simple to get online with SnapFoo

• Register your account info (currently invite only)
• Register your cell phone (you will have to validate a code you receive at the website).
• Register your email address (again you will need to validate a code to complete this).
• Start sending in pictures!  It is that easy.

You can register multiple devices and email addresses to access the service as well so that makes it very convenient.  As with anything coming out these days there is also a social aspect of SnapFoo and so you can add friends and watch their mobile photo blog along side of yours.  The developers are also adding features to share your SnapFoo photos with your friends on Twitter, flickr, myspace.com and of course there is a Facebook application.  If you are not part of any of those then they also have a widget builder to give you the code to show off your mobile photo blog on your personal web page.

I believe SnapFoo is going to be extremely popular once it goes public because it is easy to use and is very portable – something you can take with you everywhere you go (with cell phone in hand of course).

Since this is a private, invite only beta I would like to make two invites available from my pool of invites.

All you have to do is register for an account here at WindowsObserver.com and make a comment on this post.  The comment should be about what your plans would be with this SnapFoo account and a commitment to provide the developers good feedback on what works well and what doesn’t since that is the purpose behind a beta.

I look forward to reading your comments.

Related Posts:

• SnapFoo.com or TwitPic.com Dilemma
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