Zooomr - Mark III Launch Continues
I’ve been keeping tabs the past couple weeks on the upgrade to Zooomr, a photo sharing site that I have started to use as noted in a previous post. During that time (still ongoing) I have received a quick education about the realities of running a website like that. The reality of running a fairly new site like Zooomr with only two people with a large number of users and is a daunting challenge.
Consider that the founder, creator, developer, coder is a 19 year old genius young man named Kristopher Tate. The CEO is a spectacular photographer with a day job as financial advisor named Thomas Hawk. That name is actually a pen name because if he used his real name he would not be free to share his opinions due to his day job restrictions (though he knows people can figure out his real name).
Zooomr went offline recently to port in the new version (Mark III). During the offline state, Kristopher and Thomas continue to stay in touch with the Zooomr community by streaming video live on UStream.tv almost 24/7 from Zooomr HQ, the data center where the servers are located, etc. This is a unique view of the struggles of running a site like that. Watch Kristopher as he wrangles some code or moves data. Thomas responds on the video stream to the chat room talking Zooomr, photography, tech, and does a little DJ’ing on the stream with his MacBook Pro.
After delays with the Zooomr update, it went live with Mark III earlier this week… For about 10 minutes. Then it went down. But this time it wasn’t intentional. Server hardware issues appeared and unfortuantely it has not been a quick fix. This wiki has updates from the Zooomr community as to the status of things so I won’t go into details. But I would like to highlight that the folks from Zoho.com, specifically Raju, have been of great assistance to Zooomr in the past 48 hrs, offering servers, data center space and technical know-how.
You may wonder, why in the world does this matter to you Jim? Well for one, I’m an amateur photographer and looking forward to using the new functionality of Zooomr. Many functions that flickr does not have. Also this 19 yr old’s talent and maturity for his age is amazing to see. Not to mention Kris and Thomas seem to be all around nice guys that have great intentions with Zooomr.
Thomas Hawk on a blog response today: “We are a two man team trying to pull off a dream. We want to build the first truly global photo sharing site and for the first time open up the $2.5 billion stock photography market to the entire world. These are big goals and ambitions. But we are just two guys. We are doing the best that we can and I think that people understand that.
It’s easy for people to take potshots at Zooomr when we are down. But we will be back up. We will get back online. And these growing pains will be a part of our history. But we will always remember the people who stood by us in our troubles and I think the support that they are giving us is something that you can’t understand because what they know that you may not is that we are doing this for them.
We are personally sacrificing much to make a better global photosharing site and to make it possible for everyone — even kids in India and China — to be able to sell photos to the rest of the world.”
I like to see stories like this end well. I think it will, but right now I’m sure its frustrating for them. I never had an inkling of understanding about what it’s like behind the scenes to create and run a site like this not to mention with just two people. Most sites would hide this kind of stuff from users, but I think being transparent like Zooomr has been in this case is actually building respect and people rooting for them.
Update: Robert Scoble is with Kris tonight to help out. Also an “unnamed company” donated two brand new servers.
Update 2 (8:20pm CDT): Thomas Hawk and Kris are live on uStream.tv and should be re-launching Zooomr Mark III tonight, possibly within the hour.
Update 3 (1:45 am CDT June 3): Zooomr Mark III is LIVE! Note that there will be bugs initially.
