the onda

So it would seem that Valleywag has outed Tabblo 10 days ahead of launch, and with somewhat good reason, blasted us for a less-than-perfectly thought-out press outreach. It's actually a fairly snarky and funny post that makes two points: first, does the world need yet another photo-sharing site (YAPS)? and second, just why would we, in a world where there are no secrets just information waiting to be discovered, try such a lame strategy for building up to our launch?

First, I would most definitely agree with Valleywag that the world most definitely does not need another photo-sharing site if by photo-sharing site what people mean is another copy of Flickr or a slightly updated version of the Generation-1 photo sites: OFoto, Shutterfly, and Snapfish. Our basic premise in starting Tabblo was that there was a functionality gap in the things one could easily do with photos online; that while Flickr defined a new mode of behavior around the photo stream constantly flowing past a community of interested users, there are still times when what one wants to do is put a bunch of photos in a context which helps to paint a picture, tell a story, or capture something particular about the subject of the photos.

If you think about it from that perspective, what you end up wanting as a user is a more of a general purpose publishing tool that lets you work with layout, text, styling elements, and pictures. You can conceive of it as a special-purpose Dreamweaver, or even more like Apple's new iWeb app, but 100% in the browser, paired with a web service, built to solve some of the collaborative problems presented by multiple photographers at the same event, and aimed at hiding the complexity of basic design, technical details, and most of all, the high threshold for participation that creative tools like Quark, InDesign, and even Dreamweaver have put in the path of regular folks.

Why go through all this trouble instead of just assuming that what people want is basic gallery-style or Flickr-style gobs of pictures with a slideshow option for viewing? Two reasons: one, when given a creative communications tool for self-expression, people show again and again an almost unlimited amount of creativity in what they do. And second, and to Valleywag snark about YAPS, we at Tabblo are most excited about competing not with Flickr, Smugmug, Yahoo Photos, and two dozen other new entrants, but with non-consumption. That is, if you look at the numbers, by far the biggest photo-sharing service out there is still email. For the most part, people find that what is out there does not add enough value to merit being used instead of just attaching a bunch of pictures to an email and hitting send (and this is despite all of the associated mailserver hell).

So, on to the second point: is it lame to send out a generic email to press that uses words like embargo, best reserved for dealing with naughty regimes? Probably, and David Parmet helped to take us to task for it. Here is our only excuse: when you are just seven people working around the clock to get a product launched, sometimes things can fall through the cracks. In the end, I'm pretty sure that our users will prefer that their credit cards get charged correctly, that their tabblos not get lost, and that the site is snappy enough. Meanwhile consider this whoops a bit of slop that we're going to work very hard to avoid in the future.

To that end, let me give you a scoop here: in a couple of days a press release is going to go out announcing a major funding event on the part of a tier-1 venture fund (Matrix Partners) who is as excited about the space and opportunity as we are. Along with the press release (as we should have done before), I'm going to write a post here describing why we went to Matrix and why they are excited about the investment.

One final thing: I'm actually glad to have made Valleywag– it might even be seen as a sort of badge of honor (though next time please use incriminating pictures of me ordering coffee behind one of those Google babes– this will make for better copy)– but I am not psyched that Kerry got singled-out for this by name. For the record, Kerry was largely responsible for why I choose Red Javelin in the first place; she's worked for some really clued-in web-native companies like Viaweb and TripAdvisor and her former clients rave about her. She is incredibly open, thoughtful, and happy to take comments and answer any questions you may have about Tabblo at: kerry@redjavelin.com. And, by the way, so am I: antonio@tabblo.com.