Picplz Shutting Down, as Free Services Often Do

Picplz is a photo/image editing and sharing app/service that has been compared to Instagram and long referred to as the Android alternative (Instagram didn't support Android until recently).

At 10:17pm EST on a Friday night (last night), June 1, Picplz sent out the following cryptic tweet:

tmblr.co/ZUq_PyMaUlXD

— picplz (@picplz) June 2, 2012

Even though I hate shortened-URL-only tweets, Picplz doesn't tweet often so I followed it to read this in the brief blog post:

On July 3, 2012, picplz will shut down permanently, and all photos and user data will be deleted. Until then, users may download their own photos by clicking on the download link next to each photo in their photo feed.

And that's it. Just about a month before it's gone. Just over 30 days to manually download each one of my photos.

My take? Oh well. It's a free service that just saw the darling of the photo manipulation and sharing space (Instagram) get bought up for an absurd amount of money. I suspect Picplz just gave up. I knew going into it that at some point I'd have to pull my stuff out (hence my regular requests on the support forum for an RSS feed of my full history).

In December 2010 I wrote about our reliance on and sense of entitlement to free services in You Get What You Pay For. This is the same thing. It's a perfect example of how you need to be prepared from the start that your favorite free service will change or go away. When it does, don't expect great (or even good or maybe any) notice or customer service.

Years ago I started using Brightkite to post images (and track my travels, share them with Twitter and Facebook, live as an online gallery, feed to mapping services, etc.). When Brightkite went away I dabbled in Gowalla and sensed its demise, so tried out Plyce, which also changed direction. I found Picplz and still dabbled in others just in case Picplz went away. Now I just need to choose my next photo posting platform and hope I can get a couple years out of that one, too.

In the meantime, I will be writing a script to wade through my 1,400+ Picplz photos and pull down all my images, descriptions and geo-data. Considering I paid nothing to use the service for over a year and a half, I think this is a fair cost to me.

Related

• You Get What You Pay For


• Brightkite Yields to Foursquare, Gowalla, Etc.


• Brightkite Changes Direction


• Why We Check In: The Reasons People Use Location-Based Social Networks (my Brightkite use is referenced in the article)


• Brightkite Tries Another Angle

Update: Sunday, June 3, 2012

This post got a lot of traffic overnight and didn't realize why at first. It seems I scooped the regular tech news outlets and so for a while this post was the only one out there. Cool. These other posts have popped up since then:

• PicPlz shutting down permanently on July 3rd, all photos to be deleted pre-fireworks at Engadget.


• Photo-sharing service Picplz to shut down on 3 July at TheNextWeb.


• The Instagram Effect? Mobile Photo Sharing App PicPlz To Shut Down Permanently On July 3 at TechCrunch.


• Photo Sharing App Picplz to Shut Down on July 3 at Mashable.


• Photo-sharing app PicPlz calling it quits on July 3 at GigaOM.


• Instagram Competitor picplz Shutting Down July 3rd at Geekosystem.

Interestingly, less than two months ago Lifehacker ran the article Don't Bother with Instagram; Here are Five Better Alternatives for Android. Of those five, Picplz is going away and Lightbox Photos got gobbled up by Facebook.

Update: Sunday, June 3, 2012, 11:20pm

Earlier tonight Picplz tweeted out some hope for those of us with lots of photos who don't really have the time to download each photo individually:

Also, soon we will provide an export solution as a thanks to you, our loyal and devoted users. We already miss you.

— picplz (@picplz) June 3, 2012

Update: June 15, 2012

Picplz notified users (via another cryptic tweet that led to a blog post) on Wednesday that it would make each user's photo archive available as a download. Users would be notified via email when their archives were ready. I received my email late last night and am in the process of downloading my 1.5GB archive now (so I have no idea the formats of anything).

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You Get What You Pay For

First off, let me apologize for ending the title of this post with a preposition. I am playing off an idiom, so I think I have some leeway. Besides, "You get that for which you pay" just doesn't roll off the tongue.

In the last week I have watched two free web services I use announce (in some fashion) that they are going away. This has caused a good deal of frustration and anger on behalf of users. And it's all just a repeat of things I have seen on the web for 15 years now.

I have watched the Brightkite blog, Facebook page and Brightkite/Twitter accounts get hammered with angry and abusive comments from users (Brightkite Yields to Foursquare, Gowalla, Etc.).

I have watched on Twitter as people have derided Yahoo's decision to shut down del.icio.us, the place where they have shared and stored bookmarks for years (Leaked Slide Shows Yahoo Is Killing Delicious & Other Web Apps at Mashable).

I felt vindicated when Google decided to pull the plug on Google Wave, partly owing to the fact that nobody could quite figure out how to wield something that was a floor wax and a dessert topping all in one (Google Wave is Dead at ReadWriteWeb).

I have watched as some of the URL shorteners on which we have come to rely for services like Twitter have announced that they are going away, or have just disappeared (List of URL Shorteners Grows Shortener).

I, and perhaps the entire web, breathed a sigh of relief when Geocities announced it was going to take a dirt nap — and finally did (Wait - GeoCities Still Exists?).

I remember when both Hotmail and Yahoo decided it was time to start charging for access to some of the more enhanced features of the free email they offered users (Say Goodbye to Free Email).

I saw people panic when they might lose access to all sorts of free video, photos, and even text content from CNN, Salon, and others (End of the Free Content Ride?).

We Get It; You've Been There, What's Your Point?

These services all have a couple key things in common:

1. Users have put a lot of time, energy, and apparently emotion into these services.


2. They are free.

The second point, in my opinion, should mitigate the first point. If you as a user are not paying to use a service, then is it a wise decision to build your social life or your business around it? Do you as a user not realize that these organizations owe you nothing?

As Brightkite announced the shuttering of its core service with only a week heads-up, they were kind enough to allow users to grab their data via RSS feeds. Yahoo hasn't even formalized the future of del.icio.us, but already fans have found a way to grab the data. But in both of these cases, if you as a user aren't backing up your data, keeping an archive, or storing it elsewhere, whose fault is it really that you might lose it all?

Is it wise to build a social media marketing campaign on Facebook, a platform notorious for changing the rules (features, privacy controls, layout, etc.) on a whim? Is relying on a free URL shortener service a good idea as the only method to present links to your highly developed web marketing campaigns? Should you really run your entire business on the features offered by Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, etc? If you have to alert staff/friends/partners to something important in a timely fashion, can you really trust Twitter to do what you need?

The culture of the web (nee Internet) has always been one of an open and sharing environment, where people and organizations post information that they understand will be shared/borrowed/stolen/derided. Somehow users of the web have come to expect that everything is, or should be, free. Look at the proliferation of sites to steal movies and music as an example on one end of the spectrum. On the other end is the reliance on Wikipedia by every school kid across the country instead of a purchased encyclopedia.

Let's all take some time to evaluate our plans and what we are doing. When that vendor who builds Facebook campaigns comes back to tell you that what he/she built last year won't work this year due to a Facebook change, there is your cost. When you have to take time from your real work to download all your bookmarks just so you can try to find a way to share them again or even get them into your browser, there is your cost. When you build a business on the back of a Twitter API and have to retool your entire platform due to an arbitrary change in how you call the service, there is your cost. When your Google Doc is sitting in "the cloud" and you're sitting in a meeting without wifi just before you have to present it, there is your cost.

This cost, however, ignores something that can't be measured on your end with dollars. The cost of sharing your personal information, your activities, your habits, are all your daily cost for using many of these services.

You may be under the impression that I have something against these free services. The use of this very blog should tell you otherwise. Instead I have something against users who have an expectation of free, top-notch service from organizations who are really only around as far as their cash flow can sustain them.

I keep my bookmarks on my local machine and just share the files between computers. I have been archiving my Brightkite photos since I started using the service, and archiving the posts to Twitter and Facebook, all the while backing up my Twitter stream. I use locally-installed software (MS Word, OpenOffice) writing to generic formats (RTF, etc.) and keep the files I need where I can access them (file vault on my site). I pay for a personal email service in addition to maintaining a free one. Other than Twitter, with its character limits, I avoid URL shorteners (and have no interest in rolling my own). I signed up for Diaspora in the hopes that I can funnel all my social media chaos to the one place I can take it with me. I keep a landline in my house so when the power goes out I can still make a phone call to 911.

I don't tweet my disgust when Facebook changes its layout. I don't post angry comments on Brightkite's wall when they kill a service. I don't try to organize people to take their time to rebuild Google Wave when I cannot. I don't punch my co-worker when he buys me a sandwich and the deli failed to exclude the mayo.

Let's all take some personal responsibility and stop relying solely on something simply because it's free. Your favorite free thing is different or gone (or will be). Suck it up and move on.

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Brightkite Yields to Foursquare, Gowalla, Etc.

Brighkite has made an announcement today that affects me and a handful of other people (not counting all the people on Facebook whose timelines I inadvertently spam): Brightkite is dropping check-ins, posts and streams.

Brightkite started 3 years ago with a Twitter-like ability to share your random musings. However, it took the Twitter idea further and integrated built-in photo sharing and geolocation for each post. It was a while before Twitter even opted to offer location in tweets, and it still relies on third-party services to link photos. Brightkite also allowed for comments on posts and more robust friend (and fan) management. But being better or first didn't quite count (which reminds me, does anyone have a Betamax VCR I can borrow?). From Brightkite regarding place check-ins, photos, and user/place streams:

These features were the defining element to our company 2 and 3 years ago, but we no longer believe they are sufficiently unique or defining to be our focus, so we are dropping them.

Brightkite itself is not going away. It will focus on its group text feature, something for which I do not have any need. I did practically eulogize the loss of these features three months ago when Brightkite announced its first change in direction (Brightkite Changes Direction). I'll spare you the recap.

Others Starting to Offer Similar Features

This isn't the only change in the location-based social media space, however. The idea of attaching photos to places and not just tweets has been gaining traction. Last March, Gowalla offered the ability to attach photos to a place (The Location-Based Wars Rage On: Gowalla Adds Comments, Photos & More). Users checking in to a place can see images from other users or contribute their own. The interface for the mobile application is a bit clunky, and it's not a major feature of the service, but it re-creates some of what we saw in Brighkite.

Gowalla announced just a few days ago that it is going to integrate with Foursquare and Facebook places, allowing users to see their friends in one stream of activity. This is a converse of the single-point check-in service offered by Check.in, offered by Brighkite, that allows users to check in to Brighkite, Foursquare and Gowalla at once using some place matching tricks.

Just yesterday Mashable posted a theory that Foursquare is going to add photo sharing, based on a screen shot from a user and comments made by the Foursquare CEO about new features in the works. If Foursquare is really offering this feature, it essentially re-creates a core feature of Brigktkite. Whether it will offer a stream of photos with comments is anyone's guess. If it does pan out, it keeps Foursquare ahead of Gowalla, owing partly to Foursquare's Tips feature (Brightkite Photo Tips, anyone?).

Gowalla and Foursquare aren't the only players in the location-based world of photos. For those who know me, Foodspotting is right up my alley, allowing users to post food photos that are associated with food venues. SCVNGR also allows people to post photos with places as part of its overall game model, awarding points for the activity. There just isn't a good way to access those photos for users who are just checking in to a place to play the game. Facebook Places tries to offer some of these features, but it gets lost in the mountain of other things users can do on Facebook and certainly has its own batch of privacy issues beyond just giving up your location.

While users can now associate a tweet with a place and post a photo readily from their mobile phones, the existing photo sharing services don't provide a way to see all images associated with a place. That is why place-centric services are starting to see the value of relying on user-generated imagery to bolster their core offering — checking in to places. In the end, being able to see photos of food, the venue, the crowd, the lighting, specials, and the local drunk may be far more compelling reasons to use a check-in service than earning badges or pins.

That Brighkite is stepping away from this saddens me, but there are clearly going to be others offering at least some of those core features in the near future.

Related Articles:

• Thanksgiving and Social Media, Redux


• Brightkite Changes Direction


• Why We Check In: The Reasons People Use Location-Based Social Networks (my Brightkite use is referenced in the article)


• Securing Facebook Places (from Your Friends)


• Twitter Pushes into Places


• Travelogues, Places and Meetups


• Brightkite Tries Another Angle


• The Future of Check-ins at evolt.org


• Mapping Location-Based Social Media at evolt.org


• Real World Hyperlinks at evolt.org


• Don't Let Social Media Get You Robbed (or Stalked)


• Enjoying Thanksgiving with Social Media


• We are thankful for... at the Brightkite blog

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Thanksgiving and Social Media, Redux

I finally get to eat.

Two years ago I hosted Thanksgiving dinner in my shoebox of a house and managed to pull it off without setting anyone on fire. Back then, my experience with social media was limited and my favorite social media tool was Brightkite.

In addition to a free meal, my family also got to experience some of the potential of social media in the form of the Brightkite wall, which was a constant stream of posts and photos from Thanksgiving meals across the country. Amazingly, they sat transfixed as it scrolled across my TV and they got a kick out of seeing a slice of everyone else's holiday.

Watching the Brightkite wall, waiting for guests.

Last year I wrote up a blog post, Enjoying Thanksgiving with Social Media, that detailed my previous year's experience and it was picked up by Brightkite on their blog: We are thankful for.... They were even kind enough to provide a link to a Brightkite wall with some search terms already selected (Brightkite only). That was back when Brightkite was still enjoying a fair amount of photo postings and had not been thoroughly overrun with spammers.

Mashable, the site for all things social media related, posted an article titled HOW TO: Plan the Perfect Thanksgiving With the Help of Social Media (although the title tag says "social web"). The article, however, has little to do with social media and instead talks about web sites focused on helping you prepare meals, travel, and generally survive the holiday chaos.

If you prefer the idea of a wall showing all the latest Thanksgiving tweets, many Twitter tools allow you to follow specific terms and hashtags, meaning you can build your own if you already have one of those tools. If you want something a little more interesting, the Brighkite wall still works and allows you to aggregate tweets in addition to posts from Brightkite. TwitterFall is another projection-friendly (or TV-screen-friendly) option for viewing tweets in a cascade down your screen. There will be more noise (spam) on it than two years ago, but it's at least a way to see live posts come through. Sadly, there is no way to aggregate all the photos that make it to Gowalla, the various Twitter image services, Facebook, and so on. But then, it's probably better to spend time with the family anyway.

I'm resisting the urge to turn this into a post about the TSA pat-down policies and the opt-out day that many are calling for on the web that coincides with the start of holiday travel, but if you want to cash in on the chaos via a new Foursquare badge, then you may just need to check in to an airport some time over the next couple days. We'll see if I get it when I do an airport run shortly...

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Location-Based SM Examples in the Real World (at evolt.org)

Whenever I speak about social media I usually field a few questions related to the location-based social media services. These include Foursquare, SCVNGR, Gowalla, Brightkite, Loopt, and now Facebook Places. The questions revolve around who is using them and why. While it's possible to see and explain the potential in these services, sometimes tangible examples are needed, and usually more than just explaining how awesome drink specials can be once you're the "mayor" of a venue. I wrote up some examples for evolt.org, and the article is now live on the site. The examples I use:

• The Ferris Bueller's Day Off Movie Experience


• NFL


• National Post at Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF)


• Universities


• STD Testing

Of course, the day after I wrote this article, more stories came out about location-based services and real world applications, but I'll save those for a follow-up article. Now go read the article: Location-Based SM Examples in the Real World

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Social Media Day in Buffalo #smdayBUF

Back in early June, the web site Mashable, known for reporting on all sorts of things related to social media among its other topics, posted an idea for creating a worldwide social media day (Join Mashable in Celebrating Social Media Day). They quickly mobilized some major cities for an event, and for smaller markets supported them with a Mashable-sponsored Meetup site (Meetup is the platform used to organize all sorts of real-life meetings based around random ideas).

Over here in Buffalo, a group of people mobilized about halfway through the month to start planning an event here in town. In record time, they got a Meetup page built, created a Twitter hashtag for the event, secured a venue, hired a DJ, and managed to trick social-media-savvy businesses into donating goods for an auction. All of this was managed using Twitter and the Meetup Buffalo page. @veganjesus (Norm Boyer) even set up a Foursquare venue just for the event (sadly, not everyone knew, so no swarm badge unlock). While my plan was to just enjoy the evening, I got pressed into service trying to make a Twitter wall, and simply cheated and used a Brighkite wall instead (yes, that was my sole contribution).

With only 50 RSVPs, one media outlet reported 140+ guests, and it seemed like far more than that cycling through the night. Scheduled for only two hours, the event went past midnight and turned out to be a huge success as people, many of whom had never met face to face but knew each other online, ended up getting along quite well, sometimes with surprising results.

You can surf the tweets that kept popping up all night with the local hashtag #smdayBUF.

In case you haven't figured it out by now, this post is really just a quick recap of the night and a great way to link to all the people who contributed something to the event. Catch all those links below, after you watch this Skunkpost video with some interesting interviews:

I suggest you jump to 2:26 and look for the burning question I posted a couple times over the course of the night. If the embed didn't work for you, watch the video on the Skunkpost site.

The event organizers: @skunkworks716 (Keith Stephen), @KatieKraw (Katie Krawczyk), @BlockClub (Patrick Finan), @Wingalls (Will Ingalls), @Djlopro (DJ LoPro), @TonyCityLove (Tony Maggiotto, Jr.), and @arampino (Amber Rampino). There were many others who helped out, lent support, provided gear, took photos, ate the food, stole some prizes, made the AV work, danced, and so on. In all, it truly was a community effort.

If you were there and you left early (say, before midnight), then you missed a good breakdance battle.

Related links:

• Photos from Clark Dever
• Social Media Day in Buffalo, NY Photos – #smdayBUF #smday (Clark Dever's blog)
• Photos from Block Club
• Happy Social Media Day! (Day-of announcements at Mashable for the worldwide activities)
• Buffalo Gets Social on June 30 (Announcement at Buffalo Rising)
• Facebook, Twitter, Myspace Celebration in Buffalo (Written story by local CBS affiliate, WGRZ)

Update: Read all about #smdayBUF 2.0, held on Tuesday, July 27 at Templeton Landing, as covered in the post Event Profile: #smdayBUF & #smdayBUF 2.0 by @TonyCityLove (Tony Maggiotto, Jr.). It even has a couple of my photos from the event.

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Travelogues, Places and Meetups

Today on ReadWriteWeb, Marshall Kirkpatrick (Co-Editor and Vice President of Content Development) has posted an article titled Why We Check In: The Reasons People Use Location Based Social Networks. In the article he explores why people use services like Foursquare and Gowalla to post their physical location for the world to see. Given that Facebook is planning to add location features and Twitter is pushing its own Twitter Places feature, this is a question many people ask — including those who use the services. As a regular user, I am often asked why and this time I had an opportunity to provide an answer for this article.

Marshall put the question out on the Twitters (yes, I am being ironical), and thanks to a retweet, it came my way. I responded with a couple tweets (below) about using Brightkite as my own travelogue. I thought what I was talking about was relatively unique. Apparently so did Marshall, because he comments on how many people made similar statements, about how they also used these services as some form of personal history.

My ego aside, which I suspect we all know is no small task, the article also discusses how the game nature of some services motivates people, while the human connection (almost forced serendipity) is a motivator for others. While the article isn't exactly scientific (at all), his polling certainly demonstrates some trends. Though there are no big surprises, the anecdotal examples are interesting.

Meanwhile, over at Mashable there is an article discussing Twitter Places, What Twitter Places Means for the Future of Location. You may recall me wondering how Twitter Places in its current form can really take over the world of location-social media in my post Twitter Pushes into Places. Mashable offers some reasons to ponder:

1. Location-Sharing to Become Mainstream
2. Boost Interest in Geo-location Apps
3. Promoted Places

In these examples, it's not that Twitter is going to take the lead, but instead that Twitter is simply going to use its "star power" to popularize and legitimize things we are already doing, or that other services are already doing.

While I've got you thinking about all these interesting bits related to location-based social media (we really need a simpler, universal name for that), take a look at this article from ReadWriteWeb: Is Geofencing the Next Evolution for Location Apps? Location Labs Thinks So. It essentially describes the thing I've always wanted Brightkite to do — notify me when I or a friend have entered some geographic area or zone and let us know each other is there. Certainly there is more to the service than this, but even if all you want is auto-checkins, then you may want to read this article.

If you've made it this far, then you may actually be interested in this stuff. If so, and you are interested in meeting people in your area who play and/or work in this space, Mashable is sponsoring a worldwide social media meetup on Wednesday, June 30. Many cities are getting in on the action. In fact, you could come to Buffalo and participate in our Mashable Meetup. If you don't, you'll be just like the other 6 billion people on the planet, and that's ok.

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The Future of Check-ins (at evolt.org)

Last week Mashable featured a post asking if location-based services are all just hype. Continuing the geolocation theme Mashable has a new post, What the Future Holds for the Checkin, by a guest blogger/columnist. I have a reservations about how well this article delves into future opportunities, so I just toss a few out here.

Please header over to evolt.org to read my article, The Future of Check-ins. It will only be there for eternity, or until the world ends, so make sure you head over there soon. To make sure you see this link, I am repeating it:

Read The Future of Check-ins at evolt.org

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Too Much Hype over Location-Based Services?

Chris Treadaway is founder and CEO of Lasso, a "hyper-local advertising platform for media outlets and small businesses." He was recently on a panel in Austin, Texas with Gowalla CEO Josh Williams, where he may have seemed like a buzz kill to many in the crowd.

Chris tells his story in a post on Mashable titled Are Location-Based Services All Hype? As an avid user of Foursquare, Brightkite and to a lesser extent Gowalla (and the quasi-aggregator Check.in), you might be surprised to hear that I tend to agree. Not that the concept is hype, but that the potential for monetizing it is hype.

In his commentary he offers some metrics that we don't see today, but that can provide real-time (or near-real-time) feedback on how location-based applications are being used:

• Percent of Active Users: What is the percentage of users who have checked in during the last day? The last week? This will give us an indication of utility and/or fatigue.
• Revenue: Exactly how is all of this translating into revenue? For the LBS app companies? For brands that advertise? For local businesses?
• Average Number of Checkins Per Day: How often do people check in? Is this derivative metric improving or declining? This will tell us about the value proposition of checking in for the average consumer.
• Time Spent in Application: What is the average time spent per day inside the application per user? This informs the market about the experience consumers have with the application and how well it captures users' attention.
• Percent of Users Who Have Been Inactive Over the Last Month: How many people installed a location-based app but got tired of it and now no longer effectively use it?

While I don't agree with some of his assertions about what motivates people to use these services, the article is a good read from someone who is in the industry and trying to survive off it.

Related

• Mapping Location-Based Social Media (this article is also at evolt.org)
• Don't Let Social Media Get You Robbed (or Stalked)

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