Should your Amazon Universal Wishlist not be enough to hammer home what you desire for an upcoming present-receiving occasion, there’s now Shopography, an app for iPhone and iPod Touch that lets you add items to a wish list with your device’s camera. Although I don’t dislike Shopography’s concept, I hate just about everything else about the app.
To use Shopography, you’ll need an account, creatable in-app. It requires your full first and last name. Against my better judgment, I provided this to Shopography. Indeed, your full name will appear on your profile, viewable to all other app users. Dislike. Shopography has users scan an item’s barcode and then state whether they “want” or “got” the item. Scanning a UPC or piggybacking on items already added to the service are the only ways to add an item to your feed. The scanner works well, mostly — the app did glitch out after my phone had gone to sleep for a while — and might be the only thing I like from Shopography, only because it recognized all of my scanned items.
Because I created an account, I was able to see what specific users had posted. There is no way to delete something you’ve scanned, as I found out when I flooded Shopography’s feed with two items multiple times — an accident, I swear. When you add an item, you’re also asked to rate where the item falls in terms of being cool or lame or cheap or pricey. I thought I was editing this rating, but instead I was publishing an item over and over. You can opt to share your item to Facebook or Twitter so your friends are privy to your every desire, and you can also add a comment about what the item is, or why you want it.
Of course, there is a social aspect to Shopography where you can follow and be followed by other users. Based on the user photos, this network populous is on the young side, too (another reason why full names is a bad idea), so I’m not sure how well matched users will be. From the speed of the recent feed’s updates, there aren’t many active users anyway.
So. Mediocre scanning, no privacy, no editing and no option to delete add up to a bad bet for buyers. Stick with the usual suspects for sharing your wants and needs.
