Voicethread has just launched an impressively designed service that allows groups of people to simply add voice or text comments to image albums.
The creator of an image album can tell his/her story using voice, text or by drawing on pictures. Visitors can add to the story using the same tools. (Here is an example. And another sweet example.). The comments are in the form of a back and forth conversation (”voicethreads”) around the images. The participants are ordered in a strip along the left hand side. Voicethread’s group format makes it different from audio competitors such as Odeo. Compared to visual competitors such as Our Story, Voicethread’s advantage is its simpler interface. You grasp it immediately, and don’t need a dose of coffee to “get” it.
Users can embed widget versions of Voicethreads on blogs and other Web sites.
Voicethread, of Boca Raton, Florida is the first venture for founders Benji Papell, previously a professional tennis player and real estate developer, and Steve Muth, previously a New York City paramedic and toy inventor. They don’t have a business model that we’re aware of. This may be a feature worth acquiring.
Sean Rad, co-founder of Orgoo.com, is a VentureBeat contributing author.
Tags: co:Odeo, co:Ourstory, co:Voicethread4 Comments
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Search Engine WEB said:
This is quite impressive - and so practical -
really adds personality to a picture gallery -will submit them to some bookmarking sites.
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Dean said:
For those interested in exploring other group audio discussion tools, I thought I’d mention our new site, Chinswing (www.chinswing.com). It’s not based on photos like Voicethread, but does have some similarities.
Cheers,
Dean (Founder/Creator of Chinswing) -
dan said:
I think voicethread is interesting, very polished look and feel wise, it was suprising to see a lack of tags, statistics on your own creations and better ways to create that social network.
I feels like a depository type site, you create it, save it there, and then point to it. It doesn’t feel like a site i can hang around in.
Its funny to see a site do what flickr should of done years ago.
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Steve said:
Hey Dan, have been listening in to our phones? Your critique is dead on. We’re working on all those features and more. The concept is casual group audio conversations around shared evocative media(a.k.a. Mystery Science Theater 3000, only your media) But good concepts are proven by doing a thousand details right, we think we’ve done about the first 150. There’s good stuff coming, stay tuned.
