Phanfare and Photo Hosting Options Update
In one of my earliest posts, I discussed my dissatisfaction with changes announced with my current hosting option for personal family photos, Phanfare. Months later, and it is coming close to the time when they are going to make everyone switch to the new version and shut down the old service.
I think I’m going to stay. They have shown a lot of flexibility, and a willingness to listen to their customers. I will deal with the networking aspects, and the forced registrations for people who want to see my photos. And if the networking leads to more mutual photo sharing, which is the company’s hope, then so much the better.
They have already added several improvements, and are working on more. I’m still a bit wary of how my family and friends will react to being forced to sign up and get an account (even though it’s free), but I’m not going to drop Phanfare without giving that a shot.
One other note. It took a while for the Phanfare management to understand that some people would resist exactly that. Just this week, after months of testing and user feedback, the owner of the company (who is very active on the support forum, and who puts his own email address on every new user invitation), wrote in those forums:
So this is obviously not what we want (or expected). We thought that people would be happy with security based on the viewers having free accounts. We did not think the viewers would resist having free accounts.
It astounds me that this was a surprise to them. I remember those first few weeks when everyone was venting their anger and disappointment on the forums about the forced changes. Many users predicted that this would be a problem, and the Phanfare reps were dismissive. I thought it was just happy talk, but they really were clueless. As a general rule, I think companies know their customers needs better than the reverse. But when it comes to certain online privacy issues, there are tons of companies who just don’t get it, and who end up getting burned when they inevitably fail to meet the expectations of their customers.
