Scrapblog, a photo sharing site for scrapbook fans, is launching a Facebook app dubbed Share the Love today. The cool thing about it is that is an example of “game-ification,” where a non-game app incorporates game-like features.
Scrapblog was, until recently, a Miami-based company that operated a stand-alone web site dedicated to scrapbook fans. It launched a very interesting virtual goods application. Users could post their photos and incorporate them into online scrapbooks that they could share with friends.
That was pretty standard. But the company went a step further, allowing users to purchase cool decorations for their scrapbooks using a virtual currency known as credits. You can purchase a virtual credit with a credit card and alternative payment systems such as special offers from Trial Pay.
Scrapblog also kept stats for its most-active users and created a leaderboard where they could compete with each other. The more they “leveled up” as power users, the more decorations they could buy for their online scrapbooks. That’s all pretty cool.
Now Scrapblog is transforming itself again. It recently hired Jill Braff, an executive at mobile game firm Glu Mobile, as its chief executive. She moved the 20-person firm to San Francisco and is driving the company further into social networking. Today, the company is lauching Share the Love on Facebook.
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the new app lets people do the equivalent of Scrapblog within Facebook itself. The app lets them create their own scrapbooks with cool designs and share them with friends. It automatically collects photos that are hosted on Facebook and allows a user to paste them into a photo collage or other things. The virtual currency also works, allowing users to pay real money for decorations.
The Share the Love app takes advantage of Scrapblog’s QuickMix technology to instantly generate a photo collage from available photos. Users can edit the automatically-generated collage or design a custom look with the free or purchased digital content. The scrapbook designs use art from established artists, who get to share in the revenue in some fashion. Braff showed the app to me today and it takes just a few clicks to create something like a birthday card. Users don’t have to leave the social network to use the Scrapbook photo services.
“The whole idea is to let people do their own storytelling,” Braff said in an interview.
Scrapblog’s research showed that people are taking more photos than ever and that Facebook has become the largest photo repository in the world with more than 10 billion photos. Photo enthusiasts are posting photos on the social network about nine times a month. The goal for Scrapblog is to create simple tools that allow everyone to create scrapbooks and cards and see just how large the mass market can grow.
Braff says the next step is to cut deals with brand companies such as Disney to enable users to use branded content in their scrapbooks. About 50 percent of Scrapblog’s business is overseas.
The three-year-old company has raised $10 million to date from Steamboat Ventures and others. It has more than 2 million registered users on its web site. Rivals include sharing sites such as Flickr or Shutterfly.