Snipd is building a social network around clipped web contents; Last.fm with music; Scribd with documents. For Phlook, it’s photos. Since its public beta launch on July 31 2008, Singapore-based Phlook (pronounced as flook) has released a series of improvements to its interface usability and socialability. The most recent ones are “favorite it” and annotation features.

Movable Social Objects

Phlook converted a ‘static’ photo into a Flash interactive one, which can be embedded on any website or blog. Now, this portable photo comes with rating, annotation and email features.

YouTube users can add commentary on videos with Video Annotations; Phlook allows its users to annotate on photo and the annotations are accessible by anyone. Users can also “Favorite” the photo. To try out these features, hover mouse over the burger photo below and slide-out menu will appear on the left. To view the annotations, click on the bottom-left of the photo.

Interactive Phlook’ed Photo

Users can customize a few parameters of the embeddable photo, namely:

• Size: photo display dimension
• View counts: track based “onRollOver” and “onClick”; view tracker can be turn off
• Add clip: appear on top-right corner whenever a mouse hovers over the photo
• Default menu: user access which menu whenever the photo is clicked

In addition to the photo’s social features, its embeddable Slideshow also get a facelift. The new layout and design seem to be more intuitive and responsive. In addition to Phlook website, users can also create Slideshows on Facebook with PicBox application.

Spanking New Slideshow Now Showing at Phlook

Phlook is founded by Wee-Kiat Ng and Justine Ho; funded by Thymos Capital LLP, a Singapore-based private start-up incubator.

Phlook Turns Photos Into Portable Social Objects originally appeared on GreyReview on February 21, 2009.