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Popular Scrapbooking Fad Goes Digital
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Added: 05/12/2004
Type: Summary
Viewed: 428 time(s)
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Popular Scrapbooking Fad Goes Digital
It’s one of today’s hottest fads among women. Stores are popping up across the nation to feed the trend while thousands of people search for information on it every day online. That fad is scrapbooking -- creating the most unique family photo albums imaginable, from touching to humorous to bizarre and beyond.
Despite its popularity, scrapbooking faces a major challenge in a world where families and friends often end up living hundreds or thousands of miles apart: how do you share your creative efforts with those you most want to share with? The solution, of course, is in going digital.
“There’s not much point in spending your time and money on scrapbooks of your toddler when no one’s around to see them,” says Dawn Anderson, president of Baby Website Maker (www.babywebsitemaker.com). “The Internet is famous for overcoming the physical distance between people, and it’s the fastest way to share your child’s first steps with the people you rarely get to see.”
A handful of businesses, including Anderson’s, have stepped in to make the sharing process simple and fun ... and a whole lot less expensive than creating physical scrapbooks. Anderson’s is among the least expensive options, where customers can have a web site for a year for less than the cost of many empty scrapbooks on the market.
Of course making a scrapbook online represents a different kind of creativity. The traditional fad plots your wits against empty pages and a handful of pictures. The newer, online fad is different. Themes and styles are generally crafted ahead of time and users are able to select from these to best suit their needs. But online, there are often other options like journals for Mom and Dad and helpful features like wish lists to fill Baby’s needs.
“Sharing is an interactive thing,” says Anderson. “When you share a physical scrapbook with your best friend, she has the chance to respond to it directly with you. That interaction needs to be duplicated online, so we offer chat features and guest books.”
There’s one thing usually in common with scrapbooks on- and offline, however, and that is space. You get only so much, and then you’ve got to buy a new scrapbook for extra photos, or remove the pictures you’ve already placed. While loaded with user features, the issue of space may set Anderson’s service above her competitors. Baby Website Maker has no space restrictions.
“The online experience isn’t supposed to be the same as the offline experience, and we don’t want it to be,” says Anderson. “Users should be able to find a service that’s easy to use, that accomplishes the goal of sharing beautifully crafted pages of photos, and that doesn’t surprise them with fee after fee. That’s why, even though we’re one of the lowest-cost options, we don’t limit anyone on the number of pictures they can share. No one else in the field offers unlimited space, but we feel it’s important to the customer.”
Whether online scrapbooking achieves the same popularity as its offline sister is yet to be seen, but there’s no question that many users will turn to this option as a time saver, a money saver, and an easy way to share the thrill of those special moments of raising kids. |
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