Kristopher Tate took issue with my assessment that Zooomr’s new release is just more half-baked bug ridden promises than a photo site…

Vincent, thanks for posting your thoughts on the matter.

I’m very good at that.

Although, maybe you should actually ask our users what they think. I’m pretty sure that they’ve been (and still are) very happy.

Are they? It seems pretty quiet over there these days. In fact, some of them are so happy they went and formed a Zooomr in Exile group on Flickr and meetup regularly in the lobby and in the Zooomr in Exile group on Photophlow.com. You’re right. They must be thrilled.

I personally think you have a problem with any site that isn’t based in the US. When I posted about our photowalk in Japan, you decided to criticize it on Twitter — how childish.

Are you kidding me? Seriously? You think I have a problem with Zooomr not working and its management heading in the completely wrong direction because the site is in Japan? That’s a good way to deflect, Kristopher, but that doesn’t address the problem in any capacity. Here’s the Tweet in question.

Oh cool… The Zooomr folks are celebrating their 2008 launch by taking a break from it and photowalking. Shouldn’t it WORK first?

I’m sorry, but what about that has to do with Japan? I never even mentioned Japan, or the fact that your site wasn’t in the United States, but that the damn thing still doesn’t, by your own admission, fully work. What are you celebrating? Getting enough of it working so you can do what you did with Mark III and drag it out another year telling people what’s coming in the 2009 release?

When Mark III Launched, we had a lot of stuff to fix and a lot of things to deal with. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the right time to go onto your podcast or any other podcast, for that matter.

Fine, but after promises and promises and us promoting the site and saying good stuff about you (not undeservedly, but we did have somewhat rosy glasses on because we thought you guys were cool) you just let us hang out to dry and left us looking like idiots after we promised you guys would be on. Numerous e-mails went unreturned (I can reprint those here, if you’d like) and we went from friends of the site who you thanked for promoting Zooomr to two shlubs not even worth an e-mail. I can’t thank you enough for that. Incidentally, during this time that you didn’t have time to speak to me or my cohost, you did spend a shitload of time watching TV, listening to music, drinking beer, and dancing on Zooomr TV. You’re right; I have no idea how you would’ve pencilled us in among all that important work.

Zipline has been the best thing that has ever come out of Zooomr. It’s recent activity + your friends photos in realtime — and it even lets you touch-bases with your friends at the same time.

And you developed it at the expense of… Let’s face it Kris. Every minute you were working on that is a minute you weren’t working on something that was broken after the move from Mark II to Mark III, which is going back to my point that Zooomr lost its focus with Zipline. You didn’t get the API together, meaning people who hated the web upload were screwed into using it. Geotagging was hit and miss. Search by color? Never worked 100%. Selling photos? I thought you guys were going to be the largest user-generated stock photography company in the world! Where’d that go? None of that was worked on, but you’re right. Zipline works great. I believe that’s the point I made in my prior post.

We released Zipline at the same time Twitter and Jaiku were just coming into view and had the feature in development after we launched our second release (way before jaiku & twitter. ever existed).

Yeah… Okay… You just launched it a year later than Jaiku… I get it…

Unfortunately for people like you, you’ve made your name on exploiting small nothings.

Oh really? Like what, for example? I won’t go into the fact that you made your name overpromising and underdelivering. We’ll let the world decide whose is better, but I promise you if you asked people outside of San Francisco who I was and who you are, I’d win. Hands down.

Zooomr has its share of bugs and issues and we are addressing that within the community.

Which is why you shouldn’t be launching new versions when you haven’t worked out the bugs in the old one.

If you actually care about Zooomr, come and join us. It’s lots of fun working together. You might even enjoy it.

I used to care about Zooomr, but with release after released of half-assed work with non functioning features and undelivered promises, I stopped caring, and it was apparent that you had also. It just. Doesn’t. Work. Anymore. That’s why I’m annoyed. Roll the clock back a few years, tack on some new features to the original release, and suddenly Zooomr is a damn good service. As it is right now, though, it’s slow, unusable, and buggy, which is the same condition it’s been in since Mark III (and to some extent Mark II).

Lastly, Zooomr isn’t trying to be a US only website — we’ve been global from day one, and expanding our reach through technologies like mobile are very important.

Expanding your reach? There’s an old saying, and I think it applies here. Make sure your belt is tightened before you stretch out your arms. I think that applies in spades here.

I hope you’ve learned a lot in these last few days.

Oh yeah, it’s been a real education.

All the best,

kristopher tate
cto & founder - zooomr

Whatever dude.