Official Zooomr Blog

Zooomr HitsHosted on Zooomr

You’ve got to check out Zooomr Hits. Amazing Stuff.

Building Zooomr GroupsHosted on Zooomr

Michael, Kris and I had a great afternoon today deciding what Zooomr Groups should look like. We spent most of it hanging out at Om Malik’s office away from the office, the Starbucks on Clay and Battery — what better place to develop software? (Thanks Club Quarters for the free wi-fi!)

We launch V2.0 on Friday and getting Groups into it has been a major goal of ours. We want to have a super cool groups/forums section and are building in all of the great community social networking tools to make your groups experience on Zooomr the best that it possibly can be. Which brings up a point. What kind of features would you like to see in Zooomr groups? Are there any admin tools or user functionality that you think we should be sure to include? Even if we can’t get it in this build we would love to know what you think are the best features to be built around group functionality.

Because as soon as we launch V2.0 this Friday we are going right back to the drawing board to create even more and better features to delight you our users for our next version. Once we have groups working on Friday we will integrate a Zooomr ideas forum also where we hopefully will receive feeback from you on how we can make the site better and better and better.

And thank you to all you bloggers who have taken us up on our free Pro account for bloggers offer so far. We were totally blown away and overwhelmed at the response. 409 comments on our original “Free Pro Accounts for Bloggers” post. Whew. Thank you, thank you, thank you! And our offer still stands so be sure to keep telling your friends about Zooomr.

Hey folks!

Today Michael van Veen, the guy who handles most of Zooomr support, has just flown-in from San Diego to help with the Zooomr 2.0 launch later this week.

Michael van VeenHosted on Zooomr

UPDATE: Please go to the following URL on Zooomr to redeem your Pro account:

http://beta.zooomr.com/proitizer

One of things that we hope Zooomr will become in the months ahead is the photo sharing site of choice for bloggers to host their images on. Since we’re new though and need to get the word out we thought the best way to get bloggers to use our site, in addition to building killer blogger friendly features, was to invite all bloggers to join Zooomr and give them a free Zooomr Pro account.

So a quick Q & A:

What? You’re giving out free Pro accounts to bloggers? Why in the heck would you do that? Do you hate money or something? No, not at all. We’re doing this because we love you, you silly blogger. Besides, uhhhh, you’re influential and most likely someone that people look up to.

Ok, So I have to be a big time blogger to get this free Pro account, right? Nope. This offer is open to all bloggers. Big bloggers and little bloggers, red bloggers and blue bloggers, yellow bloggers and green bloggers, a red blogger on a blue tree, a blue blogger on a red tree, a green blogger on a yellow tree.

All we ask is that you host at least one of your images from Zooomr at your blog. This is easy. Sign up for an account. Upload an image. And then simply cut and paste the html code with the magnifying glass above your image and you’re all set. Once you’ve blogged one of your images paste the url into the comment section of this post and we’ll upgrade you to Pro. We’re working on a better more automated way to automatically upgrade bloggers to Pro but this will have to work for now.

But what if I don’t have a blog? What, you don’t have a blog? Isn’t it time you got one? We’d love to tell you where to go to get one but we wouldn’t want to be seen as playing favorites. By the way, isn’t that Matt Mullenweg a handsome boy!

So why would I want to use Zooomr to host my blog images instead of someplace else? Ok, so first off we make it super easy for you to blog your photos and for others to blog your photos. Each photo has a magnifying glass above it. Simply click on this and cut and paste the html code for the size that you’d like into your blog.

Ok, that’s cool, but what else? We’ve got trackbacks, yes we do! Yep, as far we know we are the only photo sharing site offering them right now. Here’s how they work. Anytime anyone else links to your photo we capture the anonymous referring url information and put the trackback under your photo. We think you want to know when others are blogging your photos and where they are showing up out there in the internetland. This will also better show you the number of impressions your photo is actually getting through RSS readers that might have subscribed to your photostream and the like.

Ok fine, but what if I want to host things on my blog that aren’t actually photos. What if, for instance, I want to host a comic strip? Hell yes! We love comics! It’s your blog, host whatever you want with us. By the way, have you checked out blaugh yet? Try to make sure the comics are funny of course.

What about licensing? This is up to you, all rights reserved, creative commons, whatever. It’s your image, you choose how you want it licensed.

Hey, wait a minute, this whole scheme sounds like some publicity stunt thought up by a blogger, how come you’re giving away the store? Ok, so if it doesn’t work blame me, not Kris.

The only caveat is that we will be down for an entire day next week as we do our site transition to 2.0. I’d like to say that Zooomr is having a massage that day but the truth of the matter is that Kris and I will both be out getting facials. Your blogged pictures will still show just fine on that day though.

So what are you waiting for? Sign up for an account here and hurry up and do it now before we go and hire a CFO or some other finance type who shuts this hairbrained idea down.

And you should do it anyways because you wouldn’t want someone else getting that super cool Robert Scoble handle at Zooomr before you get around to it now would you? Heh, heh.

Oh, And if you think other bloggers might want a free Pro account feel free to spread the word. And thanks Leah for the kind words about Zooomr earlier today!

RocketBoom Goes BoomHosted on Zooomr

Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome fame (yes, this Chris Pirillo) and Brad Fitzpatrick have teamed up to create a new blog called blaugh that focuses on cartooning the blogosphere. They’ve got some pretty funny stuff up there so far. Interestingly enough, their comic today is on the Rocketboom situation. With Zooomr bloggers can host their images that they want shared with attribution with others and Zooomr users can simply copy a snipet of html code (by clicking on the magnifying glass above the photo) and add these shared images to their own blog.

Although Chris and Brad have their name, blog, copyright and sponsor in their actual image it’s still always nice to link back yet again to an original source. So thanks Chris and Brad for uploading your cartoons to Zooomr. blaugh is off to a great start and we look forward to watching more of your great work! Images hosted on Zooomr by the way are not limited only to photos. If you are a blogger and want to use Zooomr to host your graphs, or illustrations, or whatever else you’d like, feel free to post away. We are happy to have you here!

The time is almost upon us!

Be sure to RSVP for a first-hand look at all of the new incredible stuff I’ve packed into Zooomr 2 this July 14th from 8 ’til midnight. Meet Thomas, Michael van Veen, and myself at the Zooomr 2 launch at VS3.

More info as the date approaches; I assure you that it’s going to be good.

Kristopher Tate

We don’t usually do this, but Canon Europe has made a commercial that really hits at what we’re all about: Finding new things around us and the excitement of capturing those new things to share with others. Check it out, it’s quite great.

and the days go byHosted on Zooomr

Sam Bloomberg-Rissman is a pro photographer shooting some truly amazing work currently out of Spain. He goes by Ropeboy and definitely has a photostream worth paying attention to.

Blue Morning IMPHosted on Zooomr

Jeff Clow has been a favorite photographer of mine for a long time. Although there are millions and millions of shots of flowers floating around out there, every time I see one of Jeff’s I just go wow. He’s got an amazing ability to turn the color of nature into the best of color photography. Thanks for posting your great shot to Zooomr Jeff!

uhHosted on Zooomr

Say hello to Daeformity. Currently the “Most Famous” user on Zooomr.

One of the interesting features on Zooomr is that Zooomr lets you tag a photo when you or another Zooomr registered user are in it. These photos then are attached to your profile and allow you to monitor photos of you that show up on Zooomr as well as photos of you that others attach to your profile of you.

In order to add a person to a photo in Zooomr, simply click on the little “Add People” button to the right of a photograph and then type in that person’s user name. To see who is currently in the most photos on Zooomr you can check out the top 12 most famous people on Zooomr here.

Adding People in ZooomrHosted on Zooomr