After launching as South Africa's first video and photo sharing social network in March 2007, Zoopy has grown to attract thousands of unique visitors a day from South Africa, Africa and the world. Taking their service even further, Zoopy released a new version of their new site on Tuesday, featuring a complete overhaul of design and functionality.
Zoopy now describes itself as Your Social Media Playground, and it's pretty clear to see why this is the case. Their initial media offering of videos and photos has now been expanded to include user generated podcasts and blogs, bringing together four substantial media types into one location. And the ‘playground' bit makes sense once you're presented with their fresh new modular interface.
As you begin browsing through the site, the extra features reveal themselves quickly. One unique feature that few social networks have incorporated is the ability to allocate a Creative Commons license to any media item you've uploaded, allowing users to decide for themselves how they'd like to share the content they're hosting on Zoopy. Another feature that stands out is the detailed EXIF information available on all photos (including shutter speed, camera model, aperture settings and so on) and the ability to view photos in five different sizes.
Marketing and Technology Champion at Zoopy, Jason Elk, believes that the new site does justice to their original vision of online media sharing. “From the very beginning, we wanted Zoopy to be able to make social publishing easy and fun. Zoopy v2 incorporates advanced video compression technology that will result in smaller file sizes with lower bandwidth usage by the viewer. This, together with our revised hosting solution that includes an international content distribution network, will result in faster video viewing while maintaining video quality.”
“Very importantly, our new site allows our users to put all their media in one place, without having to worry about code or compatibility. All they need to concentrate on now is sharing and showcasing their media to the fullest. Instead of having videos, photos, podcasts and blogs all sitting in separate locations, Zoopy members are able to integrate everything and associate media items to blog entries in a couple of clicks,” says Elk.
Furthermore in a media launch of the Nokia N82 held in Johannesburg on Tuesday, Nokia announced that users of their Nseries devices are now able to directly upload, organise, share and browse their videos and photos on Zoopy.com. All that's required is an Nseries device and a Zoopy login.
Visitors got to see the magic in action on the new Nokia N82, with 5 megapixel pictures moving straight from the N82 to their Zoopy profiles in less than a minute, including full titles and descriptions of the uploads.
Elk is thrilled at what this means for Zoopy users, “With Nokia teaming up with us, our users can now upload and browse their media from wherever they are, whenever they like. It's complete media publishing and sharing on a single platform. We've nicknamed it Total Expression.”
But the overhaul of their site has not just been a product of the Zoopy team's ideas in isolation. Business Development Champion, Gerry da Silva, explains that the process has involved user feedback over the last few months of beta testing, “We've incorporated many user requests and suggestions into Zoopy v2 and have done our best to make things that are complex on the back-end simple and intuitive in the final user experience. In fact, to really give users more control over what they see and use at Zoopy, we've made our site live during polishing stages, to give everyone the opportunity to suggest, criticise and contribute. We're even giving a few prizes away to users who help us identify and shoo away any bugs hanging around. We can't wait to hear, see and read what our users think of what we've created together.”
Visit our PRESS OFFICE: Zoopy.com is South Africa's very own social media destination - and flipping proud of it too! It's the easiest way to connect and share videos and photos with friends, family, colleagues and (some very nice) complete strangers. From iWitness News to Nightlife and Clubs, Zoopy's making the world a smaller place that's far more fun to live in.- more....
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