Maybe it’s me, but I become a bit suspicious of any website touting itself as anything ‘next generation’. The term seems a little too ‘trekky’ for me. But DropShots Photo and Video Sharing Site must be successfully bringing customers in with this tag line. I know this because there is a running count of the number of photos that are being uploaded and this number constantly increases. To me, this is distracting and a little pointless. Number one rated photo site, Flickr.com, also has a counter, but it’s not constantly moving.
DropShots is big on announcing that there are NO ADS on their site and while this may be true there is the counter at the bottom coupled with links to articles about them and this makes the home page a lot busier than it needs to be. Okay, DropShots is VeriSign Secured, a member of the Better Business Bureau, and Forbes and the Wall Street Journal love it and the counter never stops and whew, my first impression is that this site is just a little chaotic.
The uploading and sharing process is really easy. I downloaded a drop box where I could then drag and drop my photos. I could easily find them on the site under my username. If you don’t like the idea of having to download the drop box, you have the option of uploading your pics through a web loader. Creating an album is a snap – once you have your photos uploaded, again it’s a simple drag and drop to the album of your choice. It’s the same for videos – just drag and drop and share away.
There are two types of available membership for this site – basic (which is free) and Premium at a cost of $4.95 a month. There is no contractual obligation, which means you can cancel at any time. The basic membership gives you up to 500 photos or 20 videos with a 2 minute limit. The premium is pretty much unlimited for photos, has a higher (10 minute) limit on the videos and comes with premium customer support. Keep in mind there is no basic customer support other than a help page. If you go the basic route, don’t mess up uploading your photos because if you do, you’re on your own. It really is simple though and I can’t imagine anyone having trouble with the drag and drop protocol. Single photos and such are available for purchase but a word of caution – these prints are a little pricey – almost double what you’d pay on a better known site like Snapfish.
An easy to find link takes you to the product page where you can order the usual suspects that are available at almost every other photo sharing site – photo books, mugs, calendars and mousepads. Again, the layout and design are very busy and the selection is not quite as large as some other photo sites.
There is also a blog on this site. It’s not as large and diverse as flickr.com; however, I seriously doubt it would get a whole lot of traffic. It’s a nice touch, though.
One of the features not available here that I would definitely miss is photo editing ability. If you want to do anything other than rotate a picture, you’d have to find yourself some photo editing software. DropShots doesn’t offer it.
All in all, if you’re looking for an easy to use site where you can quickly upload your pics and videos, this might be the site for you whether you’re next generation or simply sticking with this one. Once you get beyond the distractions of the page layout – it’s quite the user-friendly site.
{ 0 comments… add one now }