Tim February 22nd, 2007

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Today we will be featuring a social networking service for teens called Piczo. “But Tim, you’re not a teen, and everyone uses Myspace anyway,” you might say. However, Piczo is gaining popularity in the UK and Canada, and as we’re about to show you, has quite a bit to offer that Myspace lacks. Piczo launched in 2004 and has earned notoriety not only from the increased customization available to the average user (it is literally a WYSIWYG website builder at heart) but also for the partnerships it has created with major players like YouTube, Flock, Photobucket, and others. Signup is easy, setup is another story, but we’ll get to those details in due time. Let’s demo it.

Requirements

• Internet Connection
• Email Address
• Age > or = 13

1. We begin our journey at the front steps of Piczo and already from a designer standpoint the homepage looks quite a bit cleaner than Myspace (and look at all those beautiful people!). The big question in my mind is how atrocious the profiles inside this pristine package might look, but who am I to judge? Realistically Myspace has offered only the ability to add in HTML and CSS classes but that alone has provided the means for multiple users to mashup their profile to include animated background images, transparent overlays on the entire site, and layouts that give me nightmares. Piczo puts all these tools right in the users hands with no need for 3rd party sites to customize so the prospect of more trash is perhaps imminent.

2. So I head on over to the signup page to see what’s in store. Nothing out of place here. One thing I do like is the website they give you. Your own subdomain in Piczo is created during setup. It is interesting that the birthdate is the only means of preventing someone too young from signing up, but then again I’m not sure how companies could best deal with that. It’s an honor system at best.

3. One signup is complete I get the option of importing my contacts from a variety of services powered by Plaxo. This is another cool option that allows users to immediately increase their number of friends and get some use out of Piczo right away. Me, I don’t have any friends so I soldier on.

4. With all the initial signup out of the way I immediately get to start adding content, starting with the profile picture. Pretty straightforward but since I’m shy I’ll use the DemoMarks logo.

5. Man that looks sharp.

6. I decide to flesh out my profile a bit more with some information so I choose that. Immediately I get to the Editing page and MY SWEET LORD WHAT HATH THOUGH WROUGHT. It is as I suspected, the site went from clean and simple to ridiculous. Perhaps things would have been a bit more clear if the overlapping boxes hadn’t thrown me off. Nevertheless, as I sit here I can begin to see how parts work together. I notice the box urging me to add a background so I’ll choose that.

7. I have a wide variety of choices from solid colors and images to patterns at my fingertips. I can also upload content if I so choose but I like that Piczo has provided a lot of standard options so I don’t have to constantly upload pictures for use. I’ll choose a tiling image for a background.

8. Sweet, it’s like a custom web design job from 1996. I see the hovering box still wants more from me so I click where the excellent graffiti tells me to.

9. The WYSIWYG interface looks a bit like Linux and not all too attractive but it gets the job done. Each text box can be edited individually allowing an endless stream of customization to keep me busy all afternoon. But I have better things to do so I finish this edit up and decide to take a look at the other options for “Pimping my Piczo.”

10. One option available to insert is clipart. Again Piczo has put a ton of content online for the user to choose from and it’s all sorted in categories. Pretty easy to use and the interface is intuitive.

11. Thanks to a partnership with YouTube I can browse the latest hilarious jackass stunts done by middle schoolers and pop one into my profile with ease.

12. I can also import pictures using Photobucket. You’ll notice a storage meter at the bottom. Piczo has a pretty unique way of handling on the online storage that is required to serve up all this content. I decide to dig deeper and find out what the rules are.

13. I go to the account settings where things become a bit more clear. New users are capped at 200 uploads but there’s a thing called a “Storage Bonus” based on how many friends you have. The first hurdle for me is to find 25 people that don’t hate me.

14. Ignoring the errors to the right we can learn a bit more about this mysterious Storage Bonus. Basically Piczo is rewarding the continued users that are building their network by granting them more server space. This makes sense for many reasons and I think it’s very unique. If people sign on one time and never come back they aren’t going to need more than the minimal amount of space. However, if you have a userbase that is constantly earning new friendships and building up their profile, essentially making the most of Piczo, giving them more space to continue to grow is a great way of encouraging continued use and rewarding the loyal fans.

15. I also managed to find some community-generated tutorials that aid in the building of your page. These tutorials are written by members of the Piczo community.

16. Here’s an example of walking a person through the steps to create a fixed background image. This tutorial also gives the user some pre-made examples.

17. In the end I didn’t spend much time pimping out my Piczo Page but the possibilities seem endless. One nice feature is that users aren’t limited to a single page and can have multiple subpages, a big difference from Myspace. This practically expands Piczo from simple social networking to an online WYSIWYG Website Authoring Application.

Piczo has a lot going for them. Instead of leaving the customizing up to the 3rd party sites like Myspace, they’ve built all the functionality into the system. Their partnerships help bring new content to the users and the ability to expand a profile to multiple pages makes this a formidable option for teenagers with little experience creating websites who want a place online to connect. While it’s no “Myspace Killer” and the design issues come to the foreground in many of the profiles, Piczo has taken a unique approach in many areas to how it handles online content editing. It’s free with advertising sprinkled on just about every page and worth a look if you’re into this sort of thing.

Strengths

• Loads of preinstalled content
• Partnerships with social applications
• WYSIWYG editing with Drag and Drop

Weaknesses

• Interface confusing at times
• Lack of better layout options
• Most user-generated sites are pretty much inaccessible

Averaged Scores

• Design: 7.6
  Features/Content: 8.8
  Usability: 7.6
  Accessibility: 7.2
  Overall Rating: 7.4
  

• blogging , photo sharing , piczo , review , social networking