I Heart Zooomr

It’s new. It’s fun. I love it. I’m probably jumping the gun writing about it because Thomas told me that very soon there will be even newer upgrades, but I can’t help myself – I Heart Zooomr.

Everyone knows I love Flickr. And I still do. Zooomr does not take the place of Flickr. It instead fills another need I have, which is storytelling with my photos. I can upload my photos to Zooomr and go to the LightMap and actually GEO-place them where I physically took them. Kind of like a little breadcrumb trail of where I’ve lived and traveled and what has interested me enough to photograph. Can you just feel the ideas coursing through my veins? The possibilities??

And adding to that is the option to tag yourself inside all your photos that show you. There are specific guidelines, like making sure a certain percentage of yourself is showing in the photo, but just think what this can do for the vain people (or the teen to young 20 set with the ‘angles’ shots) in the world in helping inspire them to shoot themselves more! And other people that take your photo can add your ‘name’ tag to their photos. And pretty soon you are the most famous person at Zooomr. Ah, fame.

As if that weren’t enough, you can add to the story with a Zooomrtation. What is a Zooomrtation? It’s a sound file (MP3 and WAV) that further describes your image. It could be you talking about where you took the photo or a song to describe how you were feeling. I don’t know if there are any copyright issues with this.

The idea that I could travel inside someone’s head and see what they see, hear what they hear and experience how they feel totally tickles me in ways I can’t explain. Whatever makes me want to interview people and find out what makes them tick – that is the part of me that loves the entire Zooomr concept.

The log in process is a little hard for me. I’m so used to conventional methods, that having all the really cool and (I’m sure) progressive and safe ways to log in is a little much for me. I also get logged out more often than I would like. I would prefer to be able to just keep the browser window open and not get logged out. The community aspect of Zooomr could use some work, and it may be coming in the 2.0 launch, but all in all, I love it and can’t wait to see what happens next.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention one of my favorite parts: Zooomr has an explicit cover image that must be clicked on to show the actual image that has been tagged as explicit. As a mom, I SO appreciate that. You sometimes get tired of the child sitting next to you being surprised by a large set of gazongas that may be art or photographed with class, sure, but large gazongas all the same. It’s nice to have the choice to view it or not. I haven’t uploaded any image that would be considered explicit so I don’t know if this is a voluntary thing or not.