Birdpost – Social Networking for Birders [Review]
September 13, 2008
Article in: Birding
Birdpost is a new social networking tool for birders. The site is completely free (and still in beta so it might have bugs, will surely change, and may not always be free) and is super easy to use. Sign up for a user name, add your first bird and your on your way to creating a visual, shareable life list. But that’s not all.
Screenshot – Right after adding our first bird, the American Crow
You can also add your own images to represent your life list
Besides adding birds to your lifelist, you can add your own images to a photo gallery AND use them to represent your sighted birds. This is a fun feature; as your lifelist grows, more photos will be shown. Other users can select your uploaded photos to use as their photo representation, adding to the social aspect of Birdpost.
There is also a “friends” feature where you can share your lifelist and sightings. You can edit your profile and view a lifelist ranking of all the birders on Birdpost. After adding the seven species we saw while driving around town, we ranked 78th!
Rankings are shown on the right of your profile
Another wonderful benefit to Birdpost is the ability to search for rare birds (and of course, report them) or to search for those birds that might not be “officially” rare, but you just want to see if their around. The integration with mapping and adding dates to your sightings will be a future aide for bird conservationists as well.
Search for that bird that keeps eluding your bins
Of course, social networking sites are only as good as the users (and the number of them). So, become a member and try it out.
- Create an image-based lifelist
- Share your lifelist with other members
- Search for rare birds, report rare birds, or see if that nemesis bird is nearby
We have just begun to dig into the other features of Birdpost and as they receive feedback, things will surely change and improve (not that it isn’t great already).
And amazingly enough, Birdpost was featured on the Techcrunch 50 Best Startups, created by Techcrunch, an extremely popular blog. According to Techcrunch, Birdpost received $300,000 in funding. Perhaps birding is becoming a bit more mainstream.
Thanks to Alan from Birds ‘n Such for bringing this to our attention! Read his review of this wonderful new birding tool.
