Over the weekend I uploaded most of my photos from iPhotos up to Flickr, the photo management service recently picked up by Yahoo. Flickr is the best photo mangement system for me by far. Amazing in many ways, I love it’s interface for managing photos sets and using simple yet functional Flash interface for creating photo sets that are easily embedded in a web page, blog, or profile.
I decided to change my photos around on SpringStreet Networks, which powers my local Boston.com personals. Consistently, Boston.com has the kind of people I’m interested in. Fresh-faced, brainy and sexy, as opposed to the date-warehouses which are being taken over by Russian Brides and picture-less profiles.
I’ve always held up the SpringStreets profile as the gold standard for the industry.
Last great book read
5 things I can’t live without
5 things in my bedroom
Why you should date me
etc.
These simple questions give members ample opportunity to tell their stories in the shortest amount of text. No personality tests, no advanced features.
Last night I changed my headline, and within 5 minutes a woman emailed me and said “we may not be a match, but I’m throwing a party for single friends and I think you would really hit it off with a few of my friends.”
Intrigued, I emailed her back. Her engrish was solid and didn’t give off the tell-tale “I am honored to make your friendship my friend” that the Russian brides use. It’s too bad that I can’t make her party tomorrow night. I was pleasantly surprised that someone would reach out to me like that. Talk about a perfect example of building an affinity group within a larger community. Doesn’t happen often, last time is was from a party planner who was spamming Match.com.
Back to SpringStreet. Much to my chagrin, the SpringStreet uploader is severely broken. It uploads photos fine, but the way the photos show up in the order is inconsistent and frustrating. I feel like I’ve been playing with a Rubix cube or one of those puzzles where you have tiles in a frame, one tile is missing and you move the tiles around to complete the image. After a few minutes, you “get” how the puzzle works and finish it in a snap.
Not so with the SpringStreet photo system. I’ve been sitting here trying to get the order of my photos right for 15 minutes. Totally broken.
1) me holding big bass
2) me holding alligator
3) me jumping out of airplane
4) me on tractor
5) me in hot air balloon floating over Stockholm
The order of the photos is of utmost importance. I don’t want the skydiving photo to show up first. Can’t see my face and it’s not like I jump out of perfectly good airplanes all the time. I like the bass-alligator progression, easing into the ballsy skydiving and then me chilling out on the tractor and in the balloon.
My photos tell a story about me as, if not more, powerful than the text in my profile. Flickr is perfect for this sort of thing. Dating sites would do well to partner with Flicker-like services to provide their photo functionality. Or Picassa perhaps (owned by Google)?
Let the partner service do the development and heaving lifting, and let users have fun managing their photos. It all leads to richer profiles, which is a good thing all around.
Technorati Tags: springstreet
