The new launch of Zooomr has been a shambles, with about two weeks of downtime, and the final product isn’t even that interesting. As I write this it is down yet again, and the latest version is far too buggy to have been released and adds little in the way of innovation, with most of the new features either minor or ripped off other sites (most obviously Twitter for Zipline and Flickr for ‘awesomeness’). Chris Van Patten, editor of YouMakeMedia and previously a fan of Zooomr, described it as “it’s a half-hearted new look with a few disconnected features”. I think that’s fair. Robert Scoble, normally an enthusiastic evangelist for the service, has written a post which criticises their lack of a business plan and implores them to take serious steps to take Zooomr to the next level. He has some ideas, and so have I.

I had originally written these ideas in an earlier version of this post on my personal blog (which has fewer readers) a couple of days ago, because I felt that it was unfair to be too critical publicly, given the fact that Zooomr was built by a then 17-year-old Kris Tate, singlehandedly. Zooomr is an incredible achievement for him, and I have a huge amount of respect for him. However, the disastrous nature of the launch of Mark III looks as though it could be, at least in part, down to his lack of experience. My main evidence for this is an excellent account of the release by Zoli Erdos. He writes of Kris’ lack of focus on the core of what needed to be done to bring Zooomr back online, instead becoming obsessed by making use of a Sun server which wasn’t necessary to actually launch. He writes:

Good intentions aside, what he really needs now is razor-sharp focus on doing whatever it takes to bring Zooomr online now. When you run a Software-as-a-Service business, even if it’s all free, people, in this case 50-100,000 users become dependent on you - that’s a responsibility. Understanding that responsibility is what differentiates business leaders from dreamers - however well-intentioned, talented they are.

Note that all this is second hand information; if it has got mixed up at some point along the line, someone tell me and I’ll correct it.

Where from here, then? It has become clear that the Kris Tate - Thomas Hawk (brilliant amateur photographer, investment manager and part-time Zooomr CEO) partnership on Zooomr is no longer enough if it is to prosper. They have handled the community aspect mostly brilliantly as I wrote a couple of weeks ago (albeit with an occasional lack of sufficient information according to Zoli’s post). Things that haven’t been handled well have been engineering (the massive downtime is evidence enough for this) and business strategy. Whilst some might dispute the last point, citing the launch of the Zooomr marketplace which allows users to sell their photography as stock, I doubt that will bring significant revenue. The stock system at the moment works fine for the people it is supposed to work for (the buyers of the stock and the agencies), and I expect there will be serious problems with the signal to noise ratio in the marketplace, making it mostly useless for people wanting to buy stock.

Both those problems point to needing VC or at least angel funding. Funding would provide the ability to hire a couple of experienced engineers as well as enough hardware to ensure a reliable, effective service. They would also provide the pressure to find a proper business model. I suspect that Kris and Thomas are hard at work trying to find investment already.

They should also build out a ‘community board’. Zooomr’s strong point is its cult-like following from many key people, some of whom would have invaluable insight. Get famous people from the community with a track record of predicting the curve like Scoble (who would be happy to do this, I would have thought), as well as some non-competing clever founders, who might be less known but have better ideas, some amateur photographers and finally some random Zooomr users who live locally to help in coming up with ideas and strategy, with monthly-or-so meetings. Zooomr gets great advice and coverage, and in return Zooomr leverages their community to generate lots of good will for everyone who helps them out, as they have done with those who lent them hardware this week. They shouldn’t pay the advisors.

My other thought was that maybe Yahoo should buy Zooomr, and make it an experimental, cutting edge test ground. Chuck random ideas at it and see what happens. Kris Tate would be a real asset for Yahoo/Flickr, and the new experimental site would already have a passionate, vocal user base. I guess this is pretty unlikely to happen, though.

Zooomr could go far, but isn’t going anywhere at the moment. There’s lots going for it, but hard, shrewd decisions need to be taken now in order to realise its potential.

There’s a post on the Newsnight blog about a book called The Cult of the Amateur by David Keen arguing that the media revolution (which he refers to as Web 2.0 - I don’t think that’s a correct application of what is a fairly meaningless term anyway) has significantly harmed our culture and society; blogs allegedly ‘collectively corrupting and confusing popular opinion about everything from politics, to commerce, to arts and culture’. There are extracts of his book in the Newsnight post, if you want to read more.

Having read the extracts published, his main issue seems to be that much user generated content (UGC) is poor quality, and that the ease with which it can now be published and reach an audience because of facilitating technology is therefore a bad thing, because poor quality content pushes out the considered, well informed contributions to the media.

So what defence does the accused enter? I thought this would be a good opportunity to actually examine why the new media phenomenon is a good thing, and while I’m at it rebut his argument which, in my opinion, fails miserably. Much of this post is an adaption of what turned out to be a rather long comment I left on the Newsnight blog.

His central premise seems to be based around the abundance of poor UGC. However, he has overlooked the fact that bad UGC tends not to reach an audience. A poor quality, ignorant rant on MySpace will not reach any audience significant enough for it to do any damage. Since most people producing UGC tend to want an audience, there is actually an incentive against creating ill-informed, poor quality content because anyone with two brain cells to rub together will be able to work out that it will have a negligible reach. Those without the aforementioned brain cells will continue to produce bad content, but hardly anyone will read/watch/listen to it. And no-one forces him to watch those ‘poor fools’ on YouTube.

Contrary to his belief, there is no threat posed by bad UGC to good quality content, and the incumbent providers of much of it. The risk to the ‘old media’ is that they fail to maximise their routes to content and thus as people become less likely to buy a newspaper, their reach decreases. So long as an old media entity produces content and makes it accessible in as many ways as possible, they will continue to be a powerful voice in our society.

The new media revolution has, in fact, increased good quality content in real terms. A long tail has been created, much of which is of real value. The technology sector perhaps has the most developed media ecosystem (simply because it was the first to adopt the new technologies, and has therefore had the longest to mature), and is a good example of this. There is a clear distinction (I hope) between GizBuzz, a member of that long tail, and an ill informed rant on MySpace.

The democratisation of media has brought profound benefits. The work of the charity MySociety (behind sites such as TheyWorkForYou and the Downing Street Petitions website) is an excellent example of what the internet can do to promote good governance and make a positive difference in peoples’ lives. More people can become involved in the running of their country thanks to better communication. More people can feel enfranchised, a powerful weapon in fighting dangerous political apathy. To dismiss all of this based on the increased availability of drivel, which does no harm and he is not forced to watch, is ignorant and unhelpful.