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Megaman

So here’s a good idea. Take something that a huge number of people enjoy — lets say video games; add too it something that the Internet loves more than anything else, cool pictures. Bake in a tag cloud that actually makes life easier for the user, let it sit in the oven at 450 degrees and what do you get? Social Shots, a new site that lets you share video game screen shots.


Social Shots

The design is simple and clean, leaving plenty of room to explore the screen shots. Which is good because you will want to do a lot of exploring. There is everything a game lover could want, ranging from classic NES screens to the latest PS3 and XBox360 captures. Most of the images are high resolution with a low resolution option for people with slow connections.

If there is any real frustration, it’s that some of the text seems to have been poorly translated. There aren’t any egregious errors but some of the descriptions are strained, for example, “Be part of the best games social share.”

Speaking of social sharing, Social Shots gives you the option to embed all of its images in Forums, blogs or anywhere else on the web. Like any good “Web 2.0″ site, you can also rate those images and comment on them — though I have a hard time seeing what these features really add to the experience.

Social Shots is currently relying on Adsense to monetize. That might be the best thing for them at this point. When they get a few more eyeballs, they should look into getting picked up by some of the larger ad networks — advertisers love sites with strong niche appeal.


Web 2.0 Roundup

Overall Social Shots does it’s job well. I was surprised at the number of images they had and the quality of everything on the site. I think they could use some better localization, but otherwise it is really well put together. If you are looking for a way to keep up on the latest in video games, or have a touch of nostalgia for game history, Social Shots is the place to scratch your itch.

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