I take a lot of pictures. I share a lot of pictures on my personal site at http://www.kellysmith.com. I post a lot of pictures on Flickr. I even built a fast growing platform that lets users sell images as actual wall art over at Imagekind.
It was with great interest that I met the 19 year old developer and founder of Zooomr, Kristopher Tate, down in San Francisco some weeks back. I was curious about him, his approach and their strategy to compete with other photo sharing services like Flickr. I left very intrigued. He and his new CEO partner Thomas Hawk are really onto something here with their upcoming Mark III release of Zooomr. There are reportedly over 250 new features and they are enabling the ability for users to sell their image as stock.
I’ve long been a Flickr fan and I “believe” that Flickr is also thinking about enabling a stock image sales paradigm for their users. It’s just fascinating that a two person company got there first. I’ve had the pleasure to work with and meet Flickr founder Stewart Butterfield several times and I’m quite certain that he’d be the first to tell you that small, nimble organizations can often be more effective and innovative than big, deep pocketed organizations. In the case of Zooomr, Kris has really hammered the point home. Will I move all my images from Flickr to Zooomr? Well, probably not. That’s because I’m interested in business that I am exploring with Yahoo (another long story). But do I wish Kris and Thomas success and I’ll try the service. They are building a business the way I like to see it done. Lean, innovative, nimble and fast. And I honestly think they are going to be successful. Very successful. Great job guys.
Kelly
