YouREP.com - A first look

Florian Cervenka from yourep.com contacted me a couple of days ago and informed me about his new Flickr alternative. Since it is still in Alpha state or just getting Beta, it's really hard to compare it to long standing sites like Flickr or 23, so ... I simply will try not to compare them at all but but instead state what I like so far about yourep.com and what I don't like (sorry Florian, but you asked for that ;)).

Note: These comments are made after just browsing the page as a guest, so what I'm writing here might be incorrect. The time has come for me to stop registering at every Web2.0 app that might be interesting ;) I simply grew tired of scanning each TOS and privacy guidelines for the world "soul".

  • yourep seems to offer basically all the features you'd expect: Tags, different licenses, some basic permission system, notes, comments, etc.
  • Accounts get a 2.0GB storage limit instead of going the Flickr way of inflicting an upload limitation per month for the pro accounts.
  • There seem to be no paid accounts around yet, but I suspect that something like this will eventually have to come with bandwidth intensive webapps like photo storage sites.
  • What I currently don't understand is the motivation behind making this site. For now it looks very much like a Flickr clone (except for the account restrictions).
  • It is possible to give photos a "thumb up" but also to rate the photo on a 5-stars scale.
  • The report abuse site isn't working yet.
  • There seems to be no API available yet or at least there seems to be no public documentation about it.
  • In the photo metas, there should be a more visible distinction between different CreativeCommons licenses.
  • The info page (or FAQ) could use some more information :) For example what's the meaning of "youREP".

So for now I haven't seen anything that wasn't there before, but again: As this is just in Alpha state esp. things like an API are very likely to be adressed (as Florian already mentioned here) later on in my opinion. I'm also very curious what will happen when the site gets more users and how it will hold up compared to the all-mightly Yahoo! server farms. Let's see :)