here’s a new taste from orange called pikeo.

it’s only a beta version and available on the invitation-only basis at the moment, and the orange-pikeo association is not apparent anywhere - maybe it’s a whole metaphorical approach? after all, there’s no orange in orange pekoe tea… i’m not sure.

pikeo is a picture-sharing platform like flickr, but with a lot of mash-up features. i haven’t been invited (feeling pretty virtually unpopular at the moment for this reason) so i don’t know exactly what features they are and how they work, but from screens shots and breif descriptions, it seems to incorporate things like geoTagging and mobie integration (well, it’s orange who’s behind this thing anyway) - it looks like the user can enter three basic tags: WHO/WHAT/Where is it?

here’s some info from the site:

Pikeo is a beta product from France Telecom Research and Development LLC in South San Francisco and is not a “certified” France Telecom product. What does this mean in normal language? It means that:

• Bugs are possible. Maybe even inevitable. Like nasal hair.
• We still have a long way to go before everything runs perfectly, but please let us know when (gulp) things go wrong - at support@Pikeo.com.
• There is limited customer support right now. But it’s nice and friendly limited support. You can reach us at: support@Pikeo.com - and we’ll do our best to sort you out.
• We think that pictures tell better stories when you can give people some idea of where they were taken. Pikeo lets you look at your pictures along with a map showing ‘the scenes of your crimes’.
• Pikeo also helps you organise your pictures in smart albums based on ‘what’, ‘where’, and ‘who’ information (called ‘tags’). You can decide which of your pictures you want to share with your family, friends and everyone else, and which ones you want no one to see. Ever, ever.
• Best of all, you’ll be in full control of your community via our innovative ‘Contacts’ browsing tool – which lets you keep the riff-raff out (unless your family and friends are riff-raff. That’s for you to decide…).

i’m not sure how successful this is going to be. the timing is crucial when it comes to online business, and i wonder how many people will be willing to go through the painfully arduous migration process frm flickr to this - or any other new platform in that matter. looking at all the new things popping up like wild flowers in the backyard of my old place, i can’t help but be amazed at the clever achievement of SK Telecom in scoring cyworld in 2003. perfect timing - it introduced the concept of blogging to korea (cyworld was first launched in 1999), it combined main features of all these huge then yet-to-be-seen services like myspace and flickr, while fitting perfectly into the techno-social environment of south korea. although i do doubt its success in US (mainly because of the timing of its introduction), i still think it’s a fantastic business model, and i’m still very much fascinated by it on many different levels (apart from the fact that it doesn’t work in safari and only kind-of in firefox).

anyway, it’d be interesting to see how pikeo does globally. and something completely irrelevant - there’s also a japanese band called orange pekoe. they’ve got some lovely, sometimes boring, easy-to-listen-to tunes.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 31st, 2006 at 11:41 pm and is filed under technology, stories - old & new. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.