A cautionary tale -- beta.phanfare.com
darryl
Registered Users Posts: 997 Major grins
Major changes are afoot at Phanfare:
http://beta.phanfare.com/
Biggest change -- a move to a "walled garden", where people will have to have Phanfare accounts before they can view photos. They claim to have made this process painless and automatic (authentication information embedded in e-mailed links, so no actual "log in" should be necessary if somebody follows a link).
They claim this is to allow for more granular security and sharing, which many people have requested. But it also allows them to not so subtly increase their userbase and potential customer base.
For people who want to strictly share with a circle of friends and family, this will probably be okay. And Phanfare states that they want to get rid of Pros and Small Businesses that are using their site when they really should be using something like say... SmugMug. :}
(Quick -- get SmuggLr to work with Phanfare. There may be some customers coming your way.)
The problem is, I *liked* Phanfare for public sharing. It was kind of like Flickr, but not so public (because it isn't/wasn't as popular) with a sweet client-side upload/management app and with a way less-annoying web interface.
Anyways, those days are over because now they are basically requiring you to get the e-mail address for *EVERY PERSON YOU WANT TO SHARE PHOTOS WITH*.
This is a much greater barrier to view than just giving people a URL or even giving them a URL and a password.
Predictably, the forums are exploding with dissatisfaction:
http://forum.phanfare.com/showthread.php?t=1458
http://forum.phanfare.com/showthread.php?t=1457&page=2
Obviously this is a huge shift and a gamble for Phanfare. I understand why they're doing it. But it's disappointing, because I think the whole social networking space is already too cluttered, and this completely walled garden approach is totally the wrong way to go.
Anyways, I thought you might be interested in what things look like "on the other side."
SmugMug of course will never do anything that would cause the Pros to move, so I feel reasonably comfortable here. I would love a few more features to make "shoeboxing" and just "dumping" photos here more convenient, as I've [post=694281]detailed elsewhere[/post]. But overall, I can live with the limitations, and with [post=688574]enough hacking[/post], even get around them.
http://beta.phanfare.com/
Biggest change -- a move to a "walled garden", where people will have to have Phanfare accounts before they can view photos. They claim to have made this process painless and automatic (authentication information embedded in e-mailed links, so no actual "log in" should be necessary if somebody follows a link).
They claim this is to allow for more granular security and sharing, which many people have requested. But it also allows them to not so subtly increase their userbase and potential customer base.
For people who want to strictly share with a circle of friends and family, this will probably be okay. And Phanfare states that they want to get rid of Pros and Small Businesses that are using their site when they really should be using something like say... SmugMug. :}
(Quick -- get SmuggLr to work with Phanfare. There may be some customers coming your way.)
The problem is, I *liked* Phanfare for public sharing. It was kind of like Flickr, but not so public (because it isn't/wasn't as popular) with a sweet client-side upload/management app and with a way less-annoying web interface.
Anyways, those days are over because now they are basically requiring you to get the e-mail address for *EVERY PERSON YOU WANT TO SHARE PHOTOS WITH*.
This is a much greater barrier to view than just giving people a URL or even giving them a URL and a password.
Predictably, the forums are exploding with dissatisfaction:
http://forum.phanfare.com/showthread.php?t=1458
http://forum.phanfare.com/showthread.php?t=1457&page=2
Obviously this is a huge shift and a gamble for Phanfare. I understand why they're doing it. But it's disappointing, because I think the whole social networking space is already too cluttered, and this completely walled garden approach is totally the wrong way to go.
Anyways, I thought you might be interested in what things look like "on the other side."
SmugMug of course will never do anything that would cause the Pros to move, so I feel reasonably comfortable here. I would love a few more features to make "shoeboxing" and just "dumping" photos here more convenient, as I've [post=694281]detailed elsewhere[/post]. But overall, I can live with the limitations, and with [post=688574]enough hacking[/post], even get around them.
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devbobo to the rescue!!
Markham
www.twitter.com/markhambennett
Hi Everyone,
We have created a 50% off coupon code for all Phanfare refugees. Just enter: phanfare in the coupon field when signing up!
Thanks,
Markham
www.twitter.com/markhambennett