Scrapblog.com: Making your very own Virtual Scrapbook

Scrapblog.com is a new online, flash-based multimedia scrapbook editor for creating a virtual scrapbook using one’s very own personal computer. This website was founded by the fonding partners of Nobox, an award-winning interactive agency with clients like Toyota, Procter & Gamble and Mozilla (Firefox). It was first introduced back in 2006, briefly went offline, and was relaunched in March 2007. Currently, it has grown to nearly 2 million registered users who have created over 4 million scrapblog pages. Scrapblog.com has also made partnerships with major media sites including Disney, Discovery, Photobucket, and ABC. In fact, it has already received Series A-1 funding from Steamboat Ventures, following on $2.5 million raised from Longworth Venture Partners earlier in 2007.

Scrapblog.com enables the creation of online multimedia packages like photos and videos. It aims to deliver a degree of versatility that’s similar to what a user can get when building a real-world scrapbook, and taking one's blogs into multimedia dimensions.

What’s nice about Scrapblog.com is that a user is given the chance to showcase his/her creativity and artistry in creating personalized photo or videos slide shows that could be an instant gift for his/her loved ones. This website is really becoming popular especially to moms who love documenting the experiences of her family particularly the growth of her kids.

What makes the service even more incredible is that its use is free in charge! So no more to expensive expense on buying scrapbooks, art materials and printing pictures, Scrapblog.com definitely would help a user save money! And if one has no experience in creating online scrapbook, there’s no need to worry because Scrapblog.com also offers an 5 minute Help Library and Help Tour, which makes it so easy for users with little designing skills to grab professionally designed graphic elements, customize them to their needs, and create impressive photo slide shows and presentations.

TRAFFIC DETAILS

Scrapblog.com has a worldwide traffic rank of 23,107 (average in 3 months) according to Alexa.com.
In the Philippines, the site ranks 1,998.

BUSINESS VALUE

Scrapblog.com is linked with many designers in the scrapbooking world. Among them are Anna Griffin, Eric & Julie Comstock of Cosmo Cricket and JJ Harrison of Bam Pop. The designers allow their designs (clip arts, speech bubbles, etc.) to be incorporated in the srapbooks of the Scrapblog users, thus adding more choices and attracting more users. In exchange for this, Scrapblog created the Scrapblog Marketplace where the designers may advertise their products. Links to the designers' own websites are provided in the Marketplace. (www.scrapblog.com/marketplace/)

Scrapblog and the Designers gain competitive advantage by employing the alliance strategy.

Here are some of the pros and cons of using Scrapblog.com.

Pros of Scrapblog.com

• Users can create a profile after signing up in the site and by using one of the pre-defined themes or templates, or can start with a blank page and completely customize layouts with backgrounds, shapes, frames, text, and stickers, almost like a real scrapbook.

• Users can upload photos from their own personal computers, and/or saved images from their accounts in Flickr.com, Webshots.com, Yahoo Photos, Facebook.com and Photobucket.com. And it's so easy to place photos anywhere on a page, by simply dragging it on the desired location. One can also enjoy the fun of resizing, rotating, cropping (in star-shaped, rectangular, ovoid), and editing (by adding reflections, drop-shadows), and layering their photos too. All these can happen because Scrapblog.com has a simple interface for quickly "side loading" the images into it.

• Users can also enjoy adding video clips to their scrapblog pages. But so far, users are only allowed to get videos using Youtube URLs.
• Users can also set music to their presentations from a selection of soundtracks.

• Users can also sequence the pages in any order they like, and add impressive-looking transitions between each page.

• Users can drag-and-drop each of the graphic elements (stickers, text shapes, backgrounds, frames) into their scrapbook page. They can do almost anything on a page layout, for these elements can be easily dragged, dropped, deleted, resized and rotated.

• Users are also provided with privacy otions. They can freely choose to either share their scrapblogs with their friends (by sending them the link to the scrapblog), or they can share it on their personal blogs, and/or on their social network pages. Or else, they can make it totally private.

· Users can save their scrapblog presentations anytime unless they delete it.

· Users can create as many scrapblogs pages as they want. They can also edit their scrapblogs pages whenever they want.

Cons of Scrapblog.com

Unfortunately there are some disadvantages I found while using this site. Sometimes the Scrapblog Builder takes a lot of time to load. One cannot just copy-paste the text or message directly to the scrapblog page; instead one must re-type it all over again. The speed of uploading photos is also limited to the internet connection, so it can be frustrating to wait for all of them to load. When done creating a scrapblog presentation or slide, it also takes a lot of time to publish it, especially when it’s more than 10 scrapblog pages.

So if you’re one of those scrapbook addicts looking for a website where you can create beautiful slide shows and presentations, or make a scrapbook in a very short time, Scrapblog.com offers almost every tool that you need.

Review by: Matri-6 Group