DailyBooth is described on its website as “one big conversation about your life, through pictures.” It is a photoblogging site that allows its users to upload a photo (every day or multiple times a day) with a caption. Signing up is completely free. The goal is to allow people to document and share their lives with others. The DailyBooth slogan is “your life in pictures.” It has often been compared to Twitter and other social networking sites that allow users to follow and be followed in real time. My friend refers to DailyBooth as “face Twitter.” This is because the majority of users post images of themselves photo booth-style sitting at their computers (hence the name of the site). Users of both sites are able to post links on Twitter from their DailyBooth page, so Twitter actually increases traffic on the DailyBooth site. DailyBooth separates itself from Twitter by accentuating its unique feature: the fact that people share pictures instead of text. This tends to foster a greater sense of community and connection in a more immediately accessible way than other text blogging sites. DailyBooth is also becoming increasingly popular. It has a growth rate of about 35% a month. Site creator Jon Wheatley has been quoted as saying that “people find pictures a much more engaging medium than just text.”
Whenever a user first accesses the DailyBooth site, they are immediately confronted with the option to sign up on the site. They have their description (“one big conversation about your life through pictures”) as the first thing you see and they promise “you’ll make some new friends real fast.” You can take a picture with your webcam and sign up right then. You can also see the “live feed” at the bottom of the screen. Once you get an account, you are directed to your home page. Once there, you will see several tags at the top labeled “everything” (which is your home page), “booths” (the pictures you’ve taken), “comments,” “likes,” and “follows.” There are also buttons to take or upload a picture onto your page.
There is a similar textual literacy to Twitter required on the site, i.e. you need to know how to write and read in shorthand text lingo. Not everyone uses it, but the majority of people do some type of textual abbreviation in their “posts.” Since the main focus of the site is on the photos, it is expected that people write very little to accompany their pictures. Some people choose to write longer posts, but they never go more than a few short paragraphs. The generally accepted amount of text is about a line to two lines, but a short paragraph is not going to result in accusations of spamming the screen. Because it is a photoblogging site, it is also important to be picture/image literate. This means that the user must know how to take and upload digital photos to the site or take a photo from a webcam while on the site. They also need to know how to “read” photos and respond to them.
To participate in the site, all users need to do is snap a pic and wait for someone to comment. Because of the live feed, any user might be likely to comment on your picture rather than people you know. There is not a “friend” feature on DailyBooth, but you can “like” or “follow” other users’ Booths. You can also comment on their photos they post by following the live feed or checking in on Booths you are following. DailyBooth is also synchronous: users are constantly uploading pics to the world. As a result, when you are viewing the “live feed,” there is actually a “pause” button so you can catch up with the ones you missed if they were posting too quickly. The instant a user takes or uploads a picture, it’s on the site. However, there is no way to access all the past archives of the live feed. There is a search bar at the top of the site that will bring up booths that contain the keywords, but there is no comprehensive database of past booth’s except on the individual profiles.
DailyBooth users are also (for the most part) reflections of their real world selves. However, users of DailyBooth are much more likely to edit or alter their appearance because it is a site based a lot on looks. Quite a few of the Booths posted daily are superficial and tend to be posted by high schoolers. The site allows for the continuation of real world friendships onto the site, but the set-up is really more designed to get strangers to interact. Viewing the live feed, you see almost multiple new people per second, and any one of those have the potential to become a new friend.
The goal seems to be to have the biggest number of people following you. The people who have the most followers are not outwardly different from other Daily Booth users. The social hierarchy seems to be based on “coolness,” or everyone on the site’s agreed-upon definition of coolness. The users with the most followers take normal pictures of themselves (maybe a little more artsy). The people who are constantly campaigning to get followers never have very many at all.
Many people participated in the “Day of Silence” a few days ago – national youth movement protesting the silence faced by gay, lesbian, bi, and transgender people and their allies; deliberate silence echoes the silence they face. A lot of people were doing this, which was interesting on a photoblogging site (the pictures featured the users making some mime of not talking, usually holding their hands in front of their mouths). I noticed that half if not more of the people participating were just “supporters,” meaning they just were friends with or were in support of gay/lesbian/bi/transgender rights.
On this site, a lot of people steal other people’s pictures. The implications of this on identity are really intriguing: because that’s essentially how identity is manifested on the site (there is an option to add where you’re from and an “info about you” section on your profile, but most people don’t fill it out), stealing someone’s picture is like stealing their identity.
The purpose of the DailyBooth site is pretty clearly stated in all of the site’s literature. The idea is for the user to upload pictures of themselves that describe their life in some way. That way you know everything a user posts is really relevant to them, so that any comment you make is really going to be taken to heart. DailyBooth’s goal is to get its users talking and participating in the site all at once, so everyone is connected.
DailyBooth is tailored to our current time. Blogs are a thing of the past when you can type out your feelings in 140 characters or less. DailyBooth follows this trend with an idea that exactly the in-the-moment type of experience that most users desire today. Lots of blogging sites are starting to charge instead of being offered for free, which also suggests a shift in user preference. DailyBooth already has funding from a number of wealthy investors with others looking into it all the time. It clearly has an effective model (for the time being, anyway).
Another way in which DailyBooth trumps blogging sites is that a lot of people today (especially younger ones) just don’t want to sit down and slog through writing an entire journal entry. These people are used to writing a status for Facebook or Tweeting. Blogging is now way more effort than a large number of young people are willing to expend. They want something they can do RIGHT NOW and be done with it. The constant updating and large number of users afford this in addition to the creative user experience. There is always something new happening on the live feed.
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