We’ve covered ShoZu so many times I’ve lost count. The application used to be one of the first things I installed on my phones, though their unwillingness to increase the upload limit (which eliminated the possibility of video uploads for most of us), inability to work properly on the N95-3, and a bunch of other issues prompted me to look elsewhere. A few months ago, I had a chance to chat with CEO Chris Wade on the phone, specifically about some of the issues that I had faced with the service. Wade promised to address most of those, and I’m pleased to say that he did.
Recently, ShoZu was updated to offer users a nice increase to a maximum file size of 50MB, which is definitely nice. This makes it much easier to quickly upload larger videos, though its still not quite unlimited. They have also updated their Facebook support, with the ability to add a wall feed, comment on feed items, and upload videos. The team has also been paying attention to user requests, and now allow you to choose whether the ShoZu logo appears in your blog posts, in your footers, and other blogging-related options. Job well done, ShoZu team.
Unfortunately, the team has made yet another silly move. In addition to its presence in the various platform-specific application stores, such as the iPhone App Store, Ovi Store, and others, they’ve decided to launch their own ShoZu App Store. The ShoZu App Store only has one product – ShoZu. While this is fine – users obviously have the choice, it feels very much like the ZuCasts feature that the company launched a long while ago, which allowed users to download feeds of various content (photos, etc). The feature marked the period of time where ShoZu went from a lightweight app to one that wouldn’t run on one of the most powerful smartphones of its time (the N95-3), and ZuCasts was later canned completely. It feels like the ShoZu App Store is very much like this – something they think is needed, but isn’t really at all.
From my experience, this is a common thread with ShoZu, and is a main reason that I’m happily using Pixelpipe on all my phones. What do you think? Is it a good idea for ShoZu (and potentially other developers) to all have their own ’stores’, or should they join in the community and make it easier for consumers?
