They say a picture tells a thousand words. But what about a thousand pictures? CNET says they spell one word: CollegeLive.
CNET Networks’ latest service, WebShots CollegeLive, is a photo-sharing community where college students can post and organize pictures much like Facebook. The advantage, according to Webshots Senior Product Manager Anne Mitchell, is that CollegeLive allows anyone around the world to see those pictures, including mom and dad.
“It’s a good place to store photos for lots of people to see them, not just your college friends,” Mitchell said.
CollegeLive requires students to provide an e-mail address ending in “.edu” in order to create events for their specific school. Students can then post pictures from the event onto the event’s CollegeLive space for everyone to see. Only students from the same school can view each other’s events, making individual private communities for each college.
“Webshots currently serves over 4,000 campuses in the U.S., U.K. and Canada,” said Mitchell. Webshots plans on expanding their college base into Europe and Asia in the future.
There are already over 300 Cal Poly students using CollegeLive, according to the CollegeLive Web site.
Second year business major Kelly Nahman, who uses both Webshots and Facebook, said she enjoys some of the features on Webshots that Facebook lacks.
“I really like how it tracks your views, because it’s interesting seeing how many people are looking at my pictures,” Nahman said.
CollegeLive is currently only available in beta form, meaning many features are still being added. The abilities to tag photos and comment on photos are only a few of the features still being developed.
Students who have already tried out the CollegeLive beta, however, were given the opportunity to win an all-expenses paid trip to Europe simply for posting spring break photos. Mitchell hinted towards more trips and prizes from Webshots in the future.
There is currently a limit on the number of photos available, but that limit is expanding all the time according to Mitchell.
“We believe that the more photos, the more fun,” she said.
There is no set date for the official release of CollegeLive, but the beta version is available at www.webshots.com.