Alternatives, revisted

On my quest to get away from Yahoo!, I've advanced and hereby present an updated view. On a sidenote, since I've also been a heavy del.icio.us user, I have almost finished migrating all my bookmarks and activities to ma.gnolia.

23hq

Is off my personal list because I didn't receive any free coupons I just don't like using the site. I've been using the site to cross-post pictures from my cellphone all along and probably continue to do so since I will leave Flickr sooner or later. In some ways 23hq is very flickr like - in too many ways it sure lacks the activity, and someone should make it look good. Bummer.

Ipernity

Interesting, and still too much for me. But I guess I could live with it.

Sometimes it's also in French - geesh. ;-) I also asked them about an API - and there is none. At least no one replied to my question - what the f... Just that they had not discussed anything with Flickr, which is not what I had not asked for.

Sidenote, What is it with support queries and so on? I feel like people do not like to admit they don't offer a feature, yet they rather say "we are working on it" and sometimes nothing at all. I am not just talking about Ipernity here, also about Flickr and ma.gnolia for example. I know people are sometimes ungrateful - you roll-out x, they ask for y. But every one of those websites wants to be the nextz social whatever and drools over all my user contributed content, yet I don't even get a personalized response in return?

All in all, Ipernity really offers the most complete package - if you are looking for it all! Also in terms of stableness, it gives you the best impression from all candidates (though 23hq and Smugmug were never flacky either). I didn't have a chance yet to really review the TOS, and they also lack the API.

Zappr

Zappr is new on my list. I just found it last night. First off - I do like any plattform where my username ain't taken. So I do like Zappr. However, there's also too many things missing.

Error: The process cannot access the file 'D:\web_ToendaZappr\WebSite\/Temp/6c649b8a-cf25-49c9-ad64-9bbeb6064462_org.jpg' because it is being used by another process.

Last but not least Zappr is a service build on Windows (ASP) and uses FAMFAMFAM icons, but doesn't give credit anywhere. (Flickr even credits for ideas and inspiration. ;-)) Boo!

Sevenload

Sevenload is also new, and only in German. I won't use them because a) they don't allow certain content (political, etc.) and then it's primarily German. So even though Germany is one of the biggest countries in central Europe and even though German-speaking are also Austria, Switzerland and Lichtenstein I don't see the diversity. I like to look at pictures from Brazil. I also enjoy receiving comments from people from Japan. You see what I mean.

Sevenload also lacks the API to make it tasty. And f... embedding videos, HTML is so Web 1.0.

Zooomr and Smugmug

Right now I am pondering between Zooomr and Smugmug. They are pretty equal. Smugmug looks like the more professional of the two, Zooomr has the community part, also looks shiney and sometimes is a bitch to navigate - but yeah, the guys seem to be nice so I cut them some slack for all that's not yet working or missing.

I feel like Smugmug could open up a bit. They have this very professional attitude but a couple amateurs to stirr things up wouldn't hurt.

Final thoughts!

All in all - I think I'll renew my account with Flickr in July. Just to get something of my back. And then I'll work on migrating to another service. Whatever it may be. If anyone has more to add - please comment.

In general, people interested in migrating to wherever should look into the migratr over at Calling Shotgun.

To be continued.