The Black Stripe Site Review
Site: The Black Stripe
Members: NA
Features: The Black Stripe is a personal photo-sharing site that is sealed off from the rest of the world by not making the content open and searchable. It is designed for a true network of friends and it grew out of a personal project by the owner. Here is how he describes the site:
Some notes about the photo pool feature, and what differentiates it from other photo sharing that may or may not be available in the marketplace to you, the consumer: Basically the goal is true photo networking, or “TPN”. A site like flickr, say, is mostly about you, the photographer. Sure you have friends, but that’s just basically a link from your stack of photos to their stack of photos. Black Stripe mixes up the stacks – when I upload a picture of George and tag it with ‘George’, it appears on George’s page. So you can get every picture on the site with George in it from one place, no matter who it belongs to.
Facebook has kind of moved towards this feature set with the ability to tag people in photos and have it show up in your profile. So one of the main features of this site no longer sets it apart from potential competition.
You can order prints directly from the site, which is a nice feature.
Beyond the photo sharing you have a profile you can fill out and list your travel destinations, there are no real social networking features beyond that.
Review: Before I reviewed this site I had it classified as an art site but it is clearly photo based. When you compare it to the photo features of other social networks and the different photo sites that are out there the Black Stripe doesn’t live up to them. However if you want to create something small and private to share photos amongst a very select group of people this could be a good option.
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