New Version of FilmLoop

Do you remember comments like this about the photocasting product called FilmLoop when I posted my TechCrunch party pictures?

This “FilmLoop” outfit is doomed. The scrolling thingie in the browser is cute, but when I click on a picture, I want to see the PICTURE, not a link to download an app that does the same thing that half a dozen apps I already have can do. Frankly, it comes across as a sneaky kind of spamming.

If these clowns are venture-funded, then that will be one more example I’ll cite in years to come of VCs wasting money on stupid ideas. I guess the magic VC hypnosis trigger these days is saying “Web 2.0,” right?

Now when you click on a picture, a new browser window opens, and people can see the pictures without a download and installation. The primary use of the downloaded client is the creation of the loop, not the viewing of it.

Try clicking on the large picture in the window below to see how it works.

If you’re a blogger or a webmaster, you would download the client and create a loop of pictures. Then you can display your photos in your blog or on your site in formats such as portrait (single picture at a time) and ticker (strip of moving images).

If you don't have a blog or web site and want to share your photos, you’d just send people an URL. When they go to the URL, they will see all the pictures. Again, they do not have to download or install anything. For example, the URL for this loop is:

http://invite.filmloop.com/x?u1rtOXvCYKeNEjlgELf0PMzBAu6yT4Wo

(I am on the board of directors of FilmLoop, and Garage is an investor in the company.)

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Comments

[Sleek]

Hi Guy,
Would FilmLoop be interested in a photo album simulation feature like in http://www.sleektools.net/sleekview.html .

[Sleek]

Guy,

I think the FilmLoop would be quite useful to the online community. The product is nicely timed. If you can get few bloggers to use FilmLoop in their blogs, the ripple-effect will put it in the hands of everyone.

As far as features are concerned, I think it's as good as other products out there. Perhaps, adding a couple of more cool features will put it above the others.

BTW, your 'Art of the Start' speech is a great inspiration to young entrepreneurs. Thank you.

[Nicola Mattina]

I posted a comment with suggestions but it seems typepad lost it: maybe it thinks I can't be constructive :-) In brief, here it is again:

1. Easiness. You assume that many users don't want to upload pictures to a web site to share them. If this is true, then the user organizes photo on his pc creating album with sw like iPhoto, Picasa, Bridge and so on. Filmloop should be able to connect with this softwares and allow the user to click his album with one click instead of creating the loop picking each photo.

2. Social features. Filmloop is a social software, but it miss many social features like commenting or tagging.

3. Widgets. I would provide a widget version of Filmloop for the pubblication of loops on most popular weblogging platforms and cms.

4. Plug-ins. Many IMs offer plug-in feaures. Why don’t you offer plug-ins for Yahoo!, MSN or Skype? Chatting or talking on the phone could be a perfect time to share photos.

5. I don’t like the advertising approach. Maybe, also print services, syndication or the possibility to create a printed album (like Blurb) that is a collection of pictures shared among friends can be feasable approaches. And do not forget payments by user: some cents for each loop and you can have it ads free.

Ciao
Nicola

[Anshu Sharma]

Filmloop is a great feature. The real genius here is the name 'Filmloop'. Even if FlickR or someone copies it, I would probably call the feture Filmloop. A nice enhancement would be to have the picture pop up when I roll over or click- like in Google Maps when I click on a location on the map.

That said its hard to imagine Filmloop beating out the many online albums out there. I bet you have used this phrase umpteen times turning down ideas from people like yours truly - "This is a feature, not a business". At best, its a product. But this could be the starting point for a real, complete product and/or business.

Ideas to make FilmLoop into a business:
- Add AdLoop that allows websites to show multiple ads in one location, mixed with interesting pictures. An AdLoop with Jessica Simpson, Bob Dole and Pepsi would be a good one!
- Collect statistics on which pictures catch people's eye-balls. This could be used by Getty's Images or iStockPhoto (owned by Getty's) to price their imaging catalog based on feedback. Ad companies could use it to do research on what pictures to use.
- Broaden portfolio of widgets to include polls, in-browser chat, etc. to become a vendor for Blog widgets. (Merge to expand and become viable)
- Create desktop version of FilmLoop. Google Desktop does something similar already in its dashboard- which I very much enjoy.
- Explore other loops if consumers like the loop paradigm. To-Do loop, Dating match loop (offered by dating sites), NewsLoop, StockQuoteLoop, etc.

To the naysayers on this list- Guy is a smart guy (!), and I bet he has invested his money in the team and the vision not in a feature. Guy, please say its true!

And yes, feel free to call me if you run out of ideas...

[Todor]

I like FilmLoop. I'm not a high tech person and what's important to me in a product like this is to be easy to use, to looks good and of course - to be free.

Also, I respect company's efforts to listen to their consumers and to act accordingly.

I see that in FilmLoop's case all features mentioned above are OK and/or there is a desire to be OK in the near future.

Best of luck!

[Anand Ganesan]

Filmloop is not as bad as its been made it out to be here, a few more widgets it might b better than Slide. Mashable mentioned in his blog-post once that Filmloop folks have a wrong marketing strategy (link mentioned below) i.e less widgets, therefore less support to networking sites (for example no support to friendster), less blog widgets so couldn't pls the bloggers initially...

Hopefully the new version of Filmloop with better marketing and more widgets might make things better. One more thing if you do a google on filmloop vs slide the first result is that of mashable's blogpost and that influences a lot of people in the -ve about filmloop.

http://mashable.com/2006/05/02/web-20-wars-filmloop-vs-slide/

~Anand

[Deirdre' Straughan]

Ooh, now my loops look even better!

http://www.beginningwithi.com/italy/travel/index.html

[David Din]

After reading your article, I downloaded the FilmLoop Player and have now started sharing family photos with friends and business photos with my partners. I think this tool is great and I will continue using and spreading the news about it. Good luck with the company - hope it will become a success.

PS: a feature to add comments to individual photos would be helpful and welcome in the future.

[Matt]

NO ONE CARES ABOUT FILM LOOP!

(ok maybe i'm drunk but I don't care sober either)

[Martin Henk]

Guy, you say it's easy to criticize. But all you do is criticize the critics and not give any specific points about why this product will be successful.

I tried to have a second fresh look, give it another chance. I realized that on a page, the loop looks like a banner-ad. Considering the ever-increasing banner-blindness, I really don't think it’s such a good thing...

[Smittie]

Great. Now we have FilmLoop, kind of like Flickr, only with ads. Now how cool is that?

Aloha

[Creative One]

You know GK, you are really good with words. You criticize, you analyize, and than you compromize all in one paragraph.

However, I have no idea why one Monday-morning quarterback is better than 5 million quarterbacks. To me a quarterback is always a quarterback. I wish that I have a product to show you, but my parents always told me to go to college, get a good job, and to work for a big company.

[Anand Agarawala]

I think this AJAX-ified picture browser is a pretty cool alternative to FilmLoop.

http://blog.triptracker.net/2006/09/08/revamped-slideshow/
(click any one of the 5 pictures of Thailand)

Regardless of what you think of the FilmLoop idea, I think they've missed a lot of the subtleties in the interaction design of things such as the things mentioned in comments here.

[Andy Arnott]

I am sorry to say that I agree with the majority of the comments here. It seems too much like one of those it's been done a million times web 2.0 companies. I am also a little confused on how they plan to monetize this?!!?

Take the team and the resources for this project and start over, in a market that is not saturated. Best of luck...

[John C. Randolph]

Well, it's certainly easier to criticize some products than others, and Filmloop is a fish in a barrel, as it were.

As for what I'm creating, I'll drop you a line when it ships.  It's the kind of thing that VCs have no interest in, because we don't have a "cake walk to a billion dollars" story, and it's certainly nothing as fashionable as AJAX or "Web 2.0".

We'll spend well under a million to get it out the door, and it's nothing dazzling, just a highly lucrative instance of going after a couple of well-established vertical markets with a better product than the competition offers.

-jcr

[Mike]

Please know that I'm not a tech guy and I only understand half of what is being said here.

We used a very simple and effective slideshow on our website - www.Fwingers.com - We sell Sign Language products and are implementing a charity program where deaf schools can install our slide show on their site. When you click a picture it can link to any page you like, not just the image. We link to the individual product sales page.

The program to create the slide show is available free at www.slide.com It is pretty easy to use. My non-techy friend built our slide in about an hour. **Just be sure to use the bookmarklet if you have many pics on the same page. It will save time.

[Creative One]

I can't believe most of the people here are so close minded. 90 percentage of you CEOs here will probably fail. I think that this is the right direction where Filmloop is heading. I really don't see anything so great about Flickr either.

As long as Filmloop adapts to what the users want. I believe that they are heading in the right direction. Just make everything as simple as possible and as fast as possible. Then they might have a chance to be a better company than Flickr. Well, this is my 2 cents + one dollar.

However, If I were the CTO of FilmLoop, I would look at all the best photo websites out there. Combine all the great features that each sites have to offer and call it FilmLoop 2.0. I have the greatest product without doing too much work. Until somebody decides to do the same thing. I think this is the laziest input I have for FilmLoop, but you don't have to take my words for it.

****************

Creative One,

As you observed, it's easy to criticize the products and services of companies. It's hard to create one yourself. It would be interesting to see what the critics are capable of creating. Monday-morning quarterbacks always outnumber quarterbacks by about 5 million to one.

Venture capitalists don't fund the best critics. They try to fund the best entrepreneurs knowing that many will fail because of what the critics point out. However, some will succeed, and that's what makes the system work.

Guy

[James Shewmaker]

I am really amazed at the number of negative comments that are occurring on this topic. I did download the original application and I think that it is a great idea.

Why?

Because, it prevents the viewer from becoming frustrated by the wait time involved in accessing photos from the internet. One thing, in particular that I like is that the thumbnails are downloaded one at a time instead of several "progressive" jpegs competing with each other for download access.

Of course, I could have improved the visual impact of a number of the Tech Crunch party photos.

[James Marsh]

I'll admit, the slideshow had me watching for a few seconds, and looking down at the reel to see what was next, but once I clicked on one of the larger photos, the interface is still a bit clunky.

As previously mentioned, I should be on the photo I wanted to look at, and my pet peeve of the app was slowing down and speeding up the reel. I have to use + and -, I can't just follow my instinct and click on the highest setting.

This does not seem like something I would like to lead away from my site, however. Perhaps expanding up and taking up more space in the same browswer if people decide to click on it. If FilmLoop is down, what do my visitors see?

[Brad Balfour]

This is better. At least now there is no friction for viewing a loop. Before I never viewed any of the ones you posted since I didn't want to install the app here at work.
Now I can see the pictures directly in Firefox. Thanks.

[Rich]

Guy,

I would like to see the thumb clicked after the jump. Also after the jump, a scrolling(or not) filmloop somewhere around the slideshow would be useful.

Except for the Ebay version of the loop, I feel it can be better after the jump, if it allowed me better(maybe any) flexibility and contol with viewing the photos.

Rich

P.S. Love the book, i had to get it after i saw the video of you at TieCon...great inspiration to...START!

[Kempton]

Guy,

May I second Paul Tyma's great post and try to see from your prospective as to why FlimLoop got past your rigorous screening and what are the really powerful/profitable ideas that we are all missing here?

Look forward to that posting from you soon.

Cheers,
Kempton

[alo]

i clap efforts to increase industry speed!

[Kempton]

Guy,

You know I am a big fan of yours. Heck, I celebrated and blogged about the day you left me a brief comment on my blog!! And you've also consistently show and tell us great products/ideas in this blog.

Unfortunately, FilmLoop is not one of those great product (and it is very very far from even good). Like a previous poster said, I expect clicking on a tiny picture will get me that picture zoomed up big (not starting from the beginning). Plus I don't know how much computing resources (which may not be a lot) is being used when people view a page with Filmloop in it so I probably won't install it (not to burden my reader's computer). I am also hoping Flickr will come with with some neat and light weight implementation that does the same thing and I will try it then.

Sorry, I don't think this is what you and people at FilmLoop wants to hear. But for me, FilmLoop has passed its welcoming/neat phase and has moved firmly into the "Lets hope Flickr gets it right soon" phase.

Kempton

[Paul Tyma]

Guy -

Your blog entries are persistently insightful, especially how VCs look at, think about, and want to hear pitches.

It would make a great blog entry to tell us what you saw in FilmLoop. I've yet to find anyone that likes this idea. Obviously, they got past your rigorous screening. What are we missing?

cheers
Paul

[Brad Hutchings]

Guy,

It seems to me that the more FilmLoop goes for mass appeal, the more likely it is to be easily replicated with low cost server software that takes FilmLoop out of the, er, loop. The same functionality you show in this blog could be coded up in a couple days in flash, sans ads. Server side, it's a folder of jpeg files, and a two-week project to make a simple loop maker.

I recall that they were doing something with auctions or e-commerce. The loops could be an attractive front-end to a shopping cart system targeted at emerging sellers. There is a lot of room between $0 and what good shopping carts cost.

[Nicola Mattina]

I forgot one question: why don't you hire me to design amazing products it is worth to invest on?
;-)
Ciao
Nicola

[Nicola Mattina]

Still do not understand why one should invest in this stuff:
1. Do you really believe that people want to use it to have the big opportunity to see some ad between a picture and another?
2. Do you really believe that advertisers want to spend their money on that? Why?
3. Why should I use an application to create a loop? Why didn't you realized something that works on top of Picasa, Flickr, Adobe Bridge an so on? Or that integrates with IM?
Ciao
Nicola

[Gijs van Dam]

My 0,02$:
I miss comments with the pictures. Now it's *just* a slideshow. There's no value for me in Karen M. posting these pictures. Now if she would supply them with some spicy details (hey, it's show news, I want some rancid details) it would get 'news' value and then maybe I would subscribe to it.

Also personal filmloops would be much nicer with some comments.

[John C. Randolph]

Congratulations on a partial fix.  Nevertheless, this is not one of the investments you're going to make a lot of money on. 

If you're lucky, you might sell some of the code to Flickr, but they could probably come up with something far better than this with about a man-month of coding.

Incidentally, when I click on any of the thumbnails in the loop, I still want to see *that* picture, not whatever happens to be the first one in the set.  This isn't just broken, it's an implementation of an idea that wasn't any good in the first place.

Better luck next time.

-jcr

******************

You're a good foil. How many times have you used FilmLoop?

Guy

[Bjorn Solstad]

This looks like quite ideal for rapid sharing of picture collections for an romour/entertainment site like we are running at http://www.plotki24.com/ I will try to convince the editor to give it a go, and we'll see how it works.

[Martin Henk]

If I didn't have picasa2 with web albums, I'd give it a try :)