Streamzoo is a fully featured, photo-and-video-sharing social network that comes with photo enhancement functionality and a growing number of interactive users. Seemingly sat at the busy crossroads of Facebook, Twitter and Flickr; Streamzoo- much like picplz, harnesses some of the finer elements of these social networks into a highly promising application.
Price: FreeTested on: HTC Desire HD
Content Rating: Everyone
ProsExquisite photo enhancement options: filters, borders and tilt shift.Thriving online community.High quality photographs.Earn points for the pictures you submit.Geo-tagging and hash-tagging.Posted pictures frequently tell you the effects used.
ConsCan be a bit confusing to navigate at first.Navigating to videos seems tricky.
If a picture speaks a thousand words, in the world of short text messages and 140-character tweets, a picture-based social network makes perfect sense if you want to express yourself beyond the confines of these platforms. Streamzoo is an incredibly powerful service which not only allows you to post your photos directly from your phone, but also provides a host of photographic enhancements to tweak those snaps to perfection first.
Like some of the more established photography apps- like the brilliant Lightbox Photo‘s- Streamzoo firstly offers a series of gorgeous-looking filters to give your pics one of a variety of looks. Additionally you can add a border for your photo. Also, and this perhaps Streamzoo’s stand out here is the inclusion of tilt shifts, which create a professional and wholly focused look about your pictures in a number of different ways. These tools are all simple and fun to administer and make for an enjoyable user experience.
Once you are happy with your creation it’s time to post it online. When doing so you can give the pic a title, in addition to hashtags. These hashtags help define the picture into a category and contribute to the usefulness of the Streamzoo service. So, if you take a picture of your holiday in Barbados, you could add #barbados. Then your picture becomes immediately searchable in that hashtag stream. There are lots of streams to add your photos to if you choose, or create your own based on a hashtag. What is great here too is that it’s entirely searchable. If you perhaps plan to take your next holiday in say, Australia, you could search for #australia and find various user-taken pictures. This feature is great for exploring and following new people.
Comments and ‘Likes’ can also be added to pictures, and even after I had posted just a few pictures I found I had a number of likes, comments and new followers. It’s quite fair to say that this online community is already quite substantial and growing all the time. The other thing that stood out for me was the quality of photographs. It doesn’t take long to find some truly breathtaking shots in the streams. Interestingly too is the fact that for each like you get a point- so the more likes you get the more points you accumulate. There are daily, weekly and monthly leader boards for users who have the most popular pictures. This all contributes to a superbly connected online-environment that is constantly updating. Streamzoo therefore becomes more than just a social network for amateur photographers, there is tangible life to it.
Initially however I did find the app’s interface a little overwhelming, and I have to confess I spread myself quite thinly across all manner of social networks so I’m used to navigating new online environments. It perhaps takes a little while to figure out the differences between streams and feeds, and seeing where your photos add to a stream isn’t always straightforward or responsive. I might suggest that for all the functionality the app provides and the wealth of areas you can explore sacrifices a little in ease of use. Once you are familiar with it, these issues cease to exist, but for newcomers this might unfortunately be a little intimidating.
Watch on Mobile
Photo-sharing is arguably a growing social feature; Google+ has tried to make sharing pictures as easy as possible through it’s Android app, Twitter too has made it easier to post pictures to your stream and I have noted a flurry of new(ish) photo sharing apps on the Android Market- most notably LiveShare, Lightbox Photos and EyeEm. This is in addition to older and more established applications like picplz and the (often whispered) invite only Pool Party.
I think the app slips slightly as far as ease of use is concerned. Once you get used to it the app is absolutely fine to use, but it’s perhaps a little tricky to begin with. Maybe I personally wasn’t quite expecting the complexity and range of features the app has but it took me a while to explore and understand what was what.
Like any social network this depends very much on the user. But I enjoy taking pictures and exploring others photos so I have found myself using Streamzoo several times per week.
The interface, despite being a little tricky to navigate initially is very functional, well designed and responsive. I have found other applications which are perhaps richer, such as Lightbox Photos, but then these lack the level of functionality Streamzoo offers.
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