When was the last time you printed your family photos instead of just posting them on Facebook? when was the last time you made a real photo album instead of just posting on Picasa? The creators of the 'Flag' app decided to make people print again, and to do that - they created a simple and free high-quality printing service. The catch? An ad will be printed on the back of each print.
Printing today is usually a long and kind-of-annoying process. Even when ordering online, in most cases it's not a smooth ride. 'Flag' will let you print 20 photos each month directly from your phone for no charge at all, including shipping and tax. $0 for great memories printed every month? I have to say it's a great deal. Having ads on the back of the print makes no difference for any personal use, especially if you end up placing it in a photo album.
The app will let you edit, crop, add text, choose printing methods, shapes and more.
Check out their Kickstarter page here in order to back them up and get the app.
How will they ensure that only images the 'customer' owns the rights to are printed?
Any other printing service out there protects copyrights? I order prints from many providers, and except for one specific case - no one ever asked me to prove the photos are mine.
Obviously if we're aware of theft and are asked to intervene we'll be able too. However this is a 'problem' shared by all printing companies and devices. I can print images from Google all day I don't have right to.
Sam, this sounds awesome ! such a great idea and yes using that white blank space for something is brilliant !!
Ignore the trolls like mansgame, they just like to moan for moanings sake !
Its free, you can use it if you want, and don't if you don't, nobody is forcing anyone to do anything, but yet.....they STILL complain !!!!!
Can't wait to use it !
my were ears burning so I came back. You sound like a naive college freshman signing giving up their personal info to strangers on campus so they can get a $2 T-shirt for free. It's free!
Well, in the grownup world, there is no free lunch. There is always a catch. For the suckers, err "investors", there is no demand for this. You can get museum quality prints for what, 20 cents? I have never once heard anybody say "I wish I had prints of my pictures that I took on my $600 iphone but 20 cents is too much :( someone please give me ad based pictures for free that I can get in the mail in a month". At best, they can get their money refunded but more likely, that money is gone.
For the suckers errr "end users", they will be giving their names and home addresses to a company who may do as they wish with it. Highly doubt they'll even get any pictures.
I'm just some troll on the internet as you put it but this troll has a lot more business experience than you might think. Certainly more than the slactivism generation who have never worked a hard day in their life or risked their own money on a project.
Seems like some fools have already been parted with $53k and many more will be parted with their money without this getting off the ground. If those people like prints that much, they could have just spent that $53k at Costco instead of kickstarter.
This reminds me of the roaring 90's when people were promised to get paid if they allowed for an "app" to leave a banner ad over their computer screens. The longer the banner was visible, the more they got paid which in some cases could be as much as a $100 a month. Soon, a bunch of other start-ups started with this and there was even the Netzero's of the world around so I actually knew of people who were on Netzero with their banner, along with 3 or 4 other banners from other companies leaving their computers on 24/7 on dialup thinking they were going to bring home $300 a week by doing nothing.
It turned out there was no free lunch. Nobody got paid except for the people who suckered businesses into buying ads that would never be seen. I don't see how this one is going to be different just because Kickstarter is the hipster thing to do now when you have bad ideas that you can't finance by educated people.
By the way, printing today is the easiest it's ever been. I can send them to my Wal-greens across the street and pick them up in an hour. How hard is that?
The parallels you draw aren't entirely accurate.
Free web-hosting services were competing with companies who exchanged un-altered web access for a fee. We are competing with people who send you junk mail.
If you don't receive junk mail you're very, very fortunate, or very, very isolated. For everyone else this is a win-win. The advertisers get to give you something great in return for accepting a tightly controlled ad message. You get something you value (because you only get it if you choose to) paid for by a company that wants your attention.
We're replacing something on-one likes with something many people will love. Netzero replaced good internet access with bad internet access. Not the same deal at all.
Have you done any market research to suggest that people actually want to give their personal information to you and to get pictures with ads in the back of them? People who want prints, already get them. It costs all of 20 cents to get prints at the drugstore without waiting and without giving information or having ads.
The parallels are true because there is no promise that people will actually get prints if your money runs out so history shows that the end result is that companies will take the money they got from advertisers and run without delivering.
I'm sorry I don't have time to debate you here. I will say that no - we're not going into this with our eyes closed. We're not trying to supplant every other form of printing. This is new, far more flexible and in many ways better. If you prefer other options use them. We don't need to own 100% (or 1%) of the photo printing market to succeed.
So you take all my information Sell it to a company, you make your profits that cover the cost of the card being sent to people, and I get a box full of photos on a bunch of advertisement sheets. SOUNDS KINDA SKETCHY! Will i also be getting in the mail junk mail from those advertisers?
The whole thing sounds sketchy. If this was a good idea, they wouldn't need to use crowd funding for it.
We aren't using crowd funding because we're forced to. The model require advertisers and users. You can't have one without the other. Crowdfunding allows us to identify a group or users so into the idea they're prepared to pay for something that'll eventually be free to all.
So what happens if after you get all your money from these people, you decide that you don't want to go through with this or find out advertisers aren't lining up. Do you give the money back?
Kickstarter requires that you pledge to fulfill or refund. However I've been working on this since 2010. The advertisers are known to us now. Kickstarter solves the chicken and egg problem. We can't sell ads without knowing who our audience is. This launch helps build that core base of users. TL;DR - we know we can sell the ads because those conversations have already taken place.
Why did you just assume they'll take all your information and sell it to the company? If you actually read their kickstarter page, specifically the comments section. The owner goes into detail that they only share aggregated data to advertisers. They won't share your name or address, nor will the advertisers ever see the images of the users. The advertiser will only know your zip code so it'll attract local businesses to advertise.
We are committed not to selling people's information. We wouldn't want that for ourselves, we don't want that for you. Our model is built on you looking forward to receiving mailings from us. That means we have to ensure quality is high, security is tight and you are respected.
I dunno, I like my $0.89 prints from PostalPix for this kind of thing.
I like it - how can I be upset or worried about 20 free prints I don't have to order. If you are concerned about your mailbox or safety get off the internet :)
Btw
Jimmy Schaefer you are connected via social networks such as facebook. You shoud'nt be afraid of your personal life being shared - delicious cookies :F
I like the concept and don't think the small Kickstarter investors are "suckers." They will likely get their monies worth out of the deal. What I can't clearly see is how this is any different than GroupOn, which is still struggling to make any positive cash flow. Yeah, the pizza guy down the street is doing a bit better than breakeven with GroupOn ads, but most small businesses are not. So how does this start-up make money only target marketing by zip code? Unlike GroupOn, they have postage and printing costs. I am not suggesting they cannot do it, just that I don't see how profitable it can become.