Phanfare Blog - Latest Comments in Teddy Roosevelt told us to embark on Phanfare 2.0

Re: Teddy Roosevelt told us to embark on Phanfare 2.0

Katherine — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 09:17:30 -0000

Please, please reconsider. I will never ask friends and family to set up an account to see my pictures. The main reason is that, as everyone knows, you lose your password and forget your log in for sites you only use occasionally. So I would be putting up a big barrier for my friends and family.

Your service kindly emailed me the options for sending out the album without asking people to sign up. In order to do this, it appears, I must pay $55 a year and deal with the following:

- No address book to keep and manage my email addresses
- No security on the album- anyone can forward my email and anyone can go in. Strangers can see my child in the bathtub and I will have no idea.
- No way to track whether or not people I have invited via email to see the albums have seen it- so if I am using the wrong email address, I will never know.
- No album-level security- i.e. I can't control who sees what album- so if I have dinner with a group of people and want those pictures to be private just for our group for some reason, I can't do that.

Please, please, just give us an option of Phanfare 1.0. It was the best service on the web. I am demoing SmugMug and it is so poor but I will be forced to sign up for it if things don't change, quickly.

Teddy Roosevelt also said "The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything." It's ok to make mistakes, let's just acknowledge it and give the people what they want- Phanfare 1.0!

Re: Teddy Roosevelt told us to embark on Phanfare 2.0

kai — Fri, 09 May 2008 00:50:23 -0000

I loved phanfare 1.0 because it's easy to share photos and videos with friends and family.

Phanfare 2.0 just totally sucks because people have to sign up to view photos.
That's plain stupid.

I've read the unhappy posts in forum and comments here.
The response from Phanfare is just brainless: keep telling us how great 2.0 it is with the useless social networking feature, and how much better the 2.0 authentication system is.

That's one lesson of how going to so-called web 2.0 is such a bad idea.

Re: Teddy Roosevelt told us to embark on Phanfare 2.0

leaving — Thu, 08 May 2008 01:09:19 -0000

I'm leaving cuz this new change sucks.

But i just wanted to let you know that you're doing probably the stupidest thing you could possibly do by not listening to your customers complaints and allowing them all to bail out to another service that basically offers what you used to ie: smugmug.com, etc.

the funny thing is later one, you'll realize you F'ed up bigtime and try to entice people back with the "classic" service- and here's where you'll really feel the sting, cuz no one trusts you now, and we will have all spent extra time and money (you stole my money by the way with this bait & switch)
setting up elsewhere and will NEVER come back.

you need to to fire whoever the geniuses who came up with this one are..

Re: Teddy Roosevelt told us to embark on Phanfare 2.0

Peter — Sun, 04 May 2008 03:49:53 -0000

Andrew,

It is amazing that with endless comments on how unhappy people are, you respond by telling people how they are mistaken. We, YOUR CUSTOMERS, are not mistaken. We get it. We understand what you are trying to do. We just think you are wrong! It is amazing that with all this negitive feedback, you don't step back and say... 'maybe we made a mistake... Maybe we should listen to those loyal people who help pay our rent and put food on our table... Maybe we should think about how we are betraying the trust of those who took us at our word.'

But no, you just blather on about how you think your are doing something great. There is nothing great about the changes you are making; you are just following the pack. 10 years ago it was the desire to make every site "sticky." Now there was a great concept...

What you are doing is hurting people. People counted on Phanfare to maintain thier history. You threw that trust into the trash heap!

Maybe a year from now you will decide to become a match making servce; clearly you don't really seem to understand how to make a profit.

Here is an idea, instead of changing Phanfare, sell it to someone who knows what they are doing and repects the customer base.

Peter

Re: Teddy Roosevelt told us to embark on Phanfare 2.0

Sanja — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 09:06:39 -0000

My account was recently switched to 2.0. While I see advantages of the new networking system - it is going to be nice to connect with friends and family, and see their pics in a user friendly fashion - I do not understand why you do not allow both options (old and new) to coexist.

Why can't you allow users to view albums without registering if they do not wish to do so? Provided that the registration and linking to others offer additional features, you would expect that most people would end up registering anyway. Still, you would provide additional convenience to a large chunk of your customers who like to occasionally send their pictures to their casual acquintances and co-workers (yes, I understand there is a linking option for a single album, but quite frankly, I do not think that's adequate).

Re: Teddy Roosevelt told us to embark on Phanfare 2.0

RB — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 02:05:18 -0000

Andrew,

I was very reluctant to go to 2.0 - as I am totally opposed to making people register to see photos. It is annoying when people send me a link, that makes me "register". Frankly, I just exit the page and do not register. However, the external link feature of 2.0 works well enough. People who used to be able to browse my photo albums, are the ones most likely to sign up. So 2.0 works for them. Those who only looked at the one album, well they are the ones I keep sending external links.

Some of the comments that have been posted are out of line.

Best wishes.

-RB

Re: Teddy Roosevelt told us to embark on Phanfare 2.0

Kevin — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:06:57 -0000

I too will be leaving Phanfare due to the "upgrade" to 2.0.

You really had a nice product (for which I've referred several of my friends) and it's a shame your company is losing so many customers due to this bad decision. I have no intention in "upgrading" to a horrible new product. Your "upgrade" path is comparable to Microsoft's...

Re: Teddy Roosevelt told us to embark on Phanfare 2.0

Andrew Erlichson — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 01:45:14 -0000

Steph,
Phanfare 2.0 removes the web hosting flavor in exchange for trying to accomplish something much bigger: a high quality, private photo and video sharing network for families. If you are the type of person who might install gallery than you must realize that you are fairly rare. In fact, you were rare enough that we were not making any more serving you and people like you.

Many people have told me that they used to recommend phanfare all the time to friends and family. that is great, but it did not result in a significant numbers of registrations for us. So somewhere between the recommendation and the reality there was a problem. And that is because explaining the benefits of cname support to the average person on the street is impossible. that is a geek concept.

Phanfare 2.0 does not have this problem. For the vast majority of potential users, phanfare 2.0 is better than 1.0. that some percent of our users hate it is unfortunate, but I am confident that this was the right move for phanfare to assure long term viability. ore people like 2.0 than hate 2.0, especially if you look at the universe of potential users.

Phanfare 2.0 has over 75,000 registered users and is now producing conversions to paying at nearly the rate tht 1.0 was, at only about 10% of the marketing budget. Hence, this is a better business for us.

The ultimate goal of business is to create a customer. The 2.0 orientation will ultimately allow us to serve more customers.

Andrew

Re: Teddy Roosevelt told us to embark on Phanfare 2.0

Steph — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 20:45:37 -0000

"we think that the URL www.phanfare.com and a password assigned by the viewer is ultimately easier to remember that YOURNAME.phanfare.com"

I think possibily the person is referring to their website and then a redirect....

I do NOT give "YOURNAME.phanfare.com" to my friends and family....I give my personal website address, which my husband and I have had for over 8 years now, and for the photo sharing part, it redirects to the phanfare site.

Today my husband and I have been trying to get Gallery 2.0 to work on our site to share photos, and it is just nothing like Phanfare's (1.0) features....each day that June approaches, I am more disappointed. But, maybe it will free up my time on the computer. I share photos of my 4 babies for my mom and mother-in-law for the most part, as well as sisters, cousins, friends, all thousands of miles apart.

I only just joined up on Phanfare 1.0 a few months ago, after reading reviews online! Phanfare got the best reviews. I never would have signed up and spent hours putting my photos online and getting my friends and family used to it if I knew 2.0 was coming. I must have missed that small print somewhere when I registered and paid $50 upfront.

I will be leaving Phanfare and hope for a prorated refund as I will not be emailing my friends and family asking them to register on a site. If I had wanted to do that, I would have signed up with a site like Kodak, where I could print directly. Maybe smugmug is where I should go....did do a demo, but was a bit lost....do like that it is connected with Blurb though for photo book making.

Anyway....best regards.

Re: Teddy Roosevelt told us to embark on Phanfare 2.0

Mark — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 01:31:19 -0000

Sheesh -- tough crowd. I'm a former 1.0 user, having just recently upgraded to 2.0. So far, I love 2.0 -- congrats on the upgrade! I can still do everything I needed in 1.0 (by sending users the "external link"), and get the added functionality of automatically notifying my family members every time I upload new photos. In fact, I'm getting other members of the family to sign up, so we can more easily view each other's photos.

I really don't understand the vigor of everyone's arguments. Is it really that bad to ask people to create a username/password for a free gig of storage space?

I'm a big phanfare friend, and am recommending it to all family and friends. Thanks Andrew, for your candor in addressing customers directly. I appreciate it, and it's rare to see that sort of engagement in a CEO.

Re: Teddy Roosevelt told us to embark on Phanfare 2.0

Phil D — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 23:00:31 -0000

It is noble to dare to be great, but you have failed, so you shouldn't feel very good about what you have done. After I make sure I have copies of everything I uploaded I will close my phanfare account. What a disappointment.

Re: Teddy Roosevelt told us to embark on Phanfare 2.0

Stephanie Anderson — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 12:07:49 -0000

I have posted before on this topic of moving to 2.0 and, like many, I am one of the disappointed users. However I wanted to take a moment to say that Andrew and Mark don't deserve the kind of bashing they are getting from people like "Brian" in his post from March 23rd.

If we decide not to continue on with 2.0, they have offered us pro-rated refunds and help with getting our content. They have also suggested other sites that may better suit our needs once 1.0 is no longer available.

Brian -- if you have it all figured out, perhaps you should be the next person to create a photo and video sharing site similar to Phanfare 1.0. I'll be the first person to sign up! I can tell you that I'm far from being an expert in this market or business model and will stay away from telling someone else exactly how to run their business.

I will say, however, that I continue to be heartbroken over the move to 2.0 but haven't yet decided if I'll move to SmugMug before June or give 2.0 a chance. I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that Andrew, Mark and their team can come up with a way to keep the 1.0 functionality that we all know and love.

Re: Teddy Roosevelt told us to embark on Phanfare 2.0

Derek — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 03:09:24 -0000

Sorry guys but there must have been SOME other business model you could have pursued that would have allowed the business to grow and continue.

The social networking space is already cluttered as mentioned and I'm sorry to say I don't think a picture site is something you can build around when other social networking sites already have this as a feature, not the core.

This just looks desperate and a me-too type of move that reminds me the old dot com models that went down the tubes.

I'm sorry if that's offensive but that's my honest opinion about it. I'll be moving over to smugmug. I appreciate the pointers over to that business, but this business move just seems bizarre, and why the old functionality couldn't have been preserved along side the new one, is beyond me.

Well anyway good luck.

Re: Teddy Roosevelt told us to embark on Phanfare 2.0

Andrew Erlichson — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:43:19 -0000

Technophobic friend/family, we think that the URL www.phanfare.com and a password assigned by the viewer is ultimately easier to remember that YOURNAME.phanfare.com for the average viewer.

We are looking into integrating external links better into the sharing flow so you can send a message to someone outside Phanfare and bring them in to see a single album in isolation.

Andrew

Re: Teddy Roosevelt told us to embark on Phanfare 2.0

Andrew Erlichson — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:40:47 -0000

Brian,
The changes we are making are designed to allow us to store your photos and videos for life. I am not sure what you would have done with a business that was losing money and not growing fast enough, but we decided to focus down on our core market and change the model while retaining true to our original mission. The new Phanfare may not be for you and if so, I am truly sorry. But I am not sorry that we took some bold moves to reposition the business for growth.

Andrew

Re: Teddy Roosevelt told us to embark on Phanfare 2.0

Brian — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 16:21:29 -0000

And also, let me ask this -- what happened to the promise you made to your user (customer) base when you launched and marketed Phanfare 1.0? You know, the language about storing photos and videos "for life"? You provided a simple, easy-to-use product that was valuable to many customers. They enjoyed the simple interfaces both from a "photo manager" and "photo viewer" perspective, and they looked forward to maintaining that simplicity for years to come. But now, you're changing the rules significantly for your customers, without asking them whether they wanted the rules changed. It's not that it's insane, it's just that it's BAD BUSINESS.

Re: Teddy Roosevelt told us to embark on Phanfare 2.0

Brian — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 16:02:10 -0000

Andrew:

Enough with the breast-beating about how courageous you and your colleagues are. The truth is that you're incompetent and arrogant. You provided a service to a sizeable customer base, and you forgot that in the internet era, unilateral imposition of changes that hurt and shrink that customer base are not courageous but stupid and ultimately self-defeating. Enjoy your TR quotes, because in the next 12-24 months, you'll have a lot of time to read while you're unemployed and your defunct business is added to the list of dot-bombs.

Re: Teddy Roosevelt told us to embark on Phanfare 2.0

Techphobic Family/Friends — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 11:28:06 -0000

It's nice to know that such a "long URL" will or does exist. However, this *assumes* that we will always email the URL. If everyone who went to amazon.com years ago when the 'net was newer had had to click into their email to find a long amazon URL with an embedded authorization code or had had to remember such a comlex URL, no one would have ever gone to amazon. The whole point is that we had a *simple* URL that one could remember quickly or even state over the phone if need be. If we wanted to make a non-public album on Picasa that would force us to email around our URLs-with-authorization-in-one-long-string, we'd just do that. We continued with Phanfare for it's clean and customizable look, higher quality viewing experience, and ease of use through password-protected website with easy-to-remember URL. Photo viewers should NOT be forced to go to their email to find these links.

Re: Teddy Roosevelt told us to embark on Phanfare 2.0

Andrew Erlichson — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 10:10:17 -0000

We don't expect that you invite work friends to see photos by included them in your network. We expect that you will mail those people external links to albums that give them anonymous, unregistered access to a single album through a long URL. sorry if that was not clear. we intend to make this feature more prominent.

Andrew

Re: Teddy Roosevelt told us to embark on Phanfare 2.0

Techphobic Family/Friends — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 21:32:00 -0000

We too will have to leave Phanfare. This is really an emotional and depressing thing for us. The old Phanfare was so great. If I had wanted to "invite" people to see things and force them to register, I'd have put all my photos on Facebook, for goodness sake! But services like Facebook are not "accessible" to many, including those with limited English and those with limited internet skills. There is no way that my family (including parents, in-laws) can handle the the invitation and the need to register. Plus, we have a very large extended family with whom we do NOT email who received our old URL and who could see our photos. Some of these people either don't email or aren't in the US/aren't native English speakers, so the whole registration process is a mess. As a result, there's no way that the "groups" function under the new Phanfare could handle this situation. It's just way, way too complicated. Plus, I used to send my URL around to friends to view casually at work...but now they'd have to register at this service? Who wants to do that. Plus, I don't want to keep track of these people in my profile. The whole beauty of the custom URL+password is lost. I don't want to social network over photos!!!! Phanfare is making a huge mistake.

Re: Teddy Roosevelt told us to embark on Phanfare 2.0

Andrew Erlichson — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 01:44:26 -0000

Vanessa,
I am sorry that you are unhappy with our change of direction for the product.

Phanfare 1.0 is scheduled to be decommissioned in June. I believe there is little chance that we will choose to run it longer than that. A short delay could result from our inability to upgrade everyone before that deadline.

We continue to enhance the collaborative features of Phanfare 2.0, including the groups feature. I believe that by June, it will represent a better way of collaborating with fellow classmates than Phanfare 1.0 was. That said, if only the web-hosting feel of Phanfare 1.0 will suit you, then I think you will be happier at SmugMug. SmugMug does support importing Phanfare content.

We are planning a feature that will allow you to get a unique URL that will present a Phanfare signup page. Signing up via that link will automatically bring the new person into your group.

If you have been upgraded to 2.0 and would like to wait until June to make the final decision, then please send mail to support to be reverted to 1.0. You will lose any changes made since the upgrade but be able to use 1.0 until June, as you have in the past.

Andrew

Re: Teddy Roosevelt told us to embark on Phanfare 2.0

Vanessa — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 16:45:13 -0000

In my original post, I had hoped to avoid this type of back-and-forth by posing a simple direct question regarding Phanfare 1.0. In the hopes of getting the answers to the question posed in that original post and the subsequent post, I will indulge this fact finding.

There is one central class email box. Info about the Phanfare 1.0 site has gone out via word of mouth and a class newsletter. Getting out a newletter is no easy matter and took over a year to get through the proper channels.

All "fun" aside, content control is necessary because, as Facebook has taught all of us, not everyone uses discretion when posting photos etc.

So....can my questions be answered or do I just take my business elsewhere?

Re: Teddy Roosevelt told us to embark on Phanfare 2.0

Will — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 16:14:05 -0000

Vanessa--

Is the Phanfare 1 site you maintain an official place to post pictures for your class? I had the impression that it was an informal arrangement. Otherwise, I don't understand the concern for content control. If the purpose is to share photos and videos with your class, why do you need to control the content if the only ones who could upload albums to the group are people from your class? Isn't it more fun give each person the freedom to generate and post their own content and see what happens?

Just my two cents.

Just curious: how did you distribute the link to the current Phanfare 1.0 site? And how did your classmates post things to the 1.0 site through you? Did they have to email or mail you pictures which you then posted?

Re: Teddy Roosevelt told us to embark on Phanfare 2.0

Vanessa — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 09:31:33 -0000

My question still stands ---Is there any chance that Phanfare 1.0 will survive?

Re: Teddy Roosevelt told us to embark on Phanfare 2.0

Vanessa — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 09:27:55 -0000

Will -
Perhaps you can explain to me how the word gets out to classmates without emailing each person individually. (This is how invitations are sent out on Facebook, unless you find someone who is already a subscriber, so I presume that it works pretty much the same way on Phanfare.) This is an impossibility as (a) I don't have access to all of those email addresses and (b) mass mailings to those with email addresses are prohibited by my college.
The point of having one person post on the website is content control.
Vanessa