Webupon

A competition is raging for the world’s photo bubbling business, and Facebook is the battlefield. That’s because this social network is the world’s most popular place to “post and boast” about family vacations, new houses, children and cars. On this platform, members really do share photos, and a large percentage would add text bubbles if they could…

And now they can! Over the course of the last year and a half, five different companies have launched programs that allow users to add and save comic book shaped speech bubbles on photos. Each competitor employs slightly different mechanisms and website designs, and some systems are better than others. But all of these web enterprises want the same thing – your patronage.

Of these text bubbling competitors, which will YOU choose?

Blabble

The newest competitor is something called Blabble. In August 2008, Rethink Communications, on behalf of Solo Mobile, brought Blabble to Facebook. They did a great job – this photo modifier is clean and simple and produces attractive results.

Blabble is a dedicated Facebook application that specializes in putting text bubbles on pictures. This software only uploads images from Facebook photo albums only – the company has focused exclusively on this one task. The advantage is that Blabble will save Facebook users unnecessary transfer time and repetitive uploads. Right now it’s the only competitor capable of this kind of “one stop Facebook photo bubbling” service.

Unlike all other programs Blabble adds a signature orange coloured, square shaped, text box to images. These inserts are actually very sexy looking, and their square shape is more accommodating to text. I would not describe these boxes as “comic book” shaped bubbles – they remind me of the factoids one might see in the margins of a math textbook, or on the menu of a funky restaurant in a boutique hotel.

Unfortunately Blabble’s sexy text bubble sizing is entirely automated, which has its disadvantages. Users sometimes find themselves switching words and adding or subtracting punctuation to avoid misshapen boxes.

Superlame

Superlame has been letting users place attractive comic book bubbles on their pictures for years, and they too have a Facebook application (in Beta). This app is very unique in that the control menu is found right inside the four corners of the box around the text bubble under construction. You can bold the text and increase or lower the size of the bubble, and “drag a tail” as they call it, to point to the origin of the text in the picture.

This application is easy to install and the overall platform is slick and effective. The system lets users save their images right inside Facebook. It’s great.

Its important to note however, that Superlame was spawned by comic book lovers and designed to be interpreted inside comedic genres – the bubbles and clouds have an obvious “funny pages” style that’s difficult to incorporate in a more serious photo design.

Kyolo

Kyolo is very easy to use – the opening caption reads “Speech Bubbles for Dummies” and that’s very indicative of the overall experience. This site is nicely laid out and the apparatus is handy and produces great results. It’s worth noting however, that users may only upload photos from their computers as the option to upload from a web URL, or browse existing Facebook or Flickr galleries does not exist, yet.

At Kyolo.com the bubble can be easily placed on the photo, and by using a small menu of editing buttons, the caption can be easily modified. Kyolo is the only program that lets users modify the size of the text, as well as the size of the bubble. Users can even change the shape of the bubble and make it wide or thin; the indicator “tail” can be flipped from side to side, top or bottom, or eliminated altogether.

Kyolo.com has a small community of members with a huge collection of bubbled photos in a very public gallery. Although this company has not engineered a Facebook application, they do invite users to email their doctored photos to family and friends and provide all manner of scripts for incorporation into blogs and discussion forums.

Speechable

Speechable is another free photo service that asks for donations. The program lets users upload and add

speech bubbles to their photos “and share them with friends via email or on Facebook”. But I can’t find a direct conduit to upload my Facebook photos here? The system browses my computer for images only.

The save options don’t allow a direct save into my Facebook photo collections, but I can use a tiny bookmark button that allows me to display the image on my Facebook profile, the same way I would display my favourite website or Flickr photo.

Furthermore, this software is hard to use, and yields only modest results. Rather than customize a bubble on the fly, Speechable users must select from a template of shapes at the bottom of the page. When designers click the option they want, the bubble appears on the photo in a random spot, and is quite difficult to move – you must click the top of the bubble to move it and that bit of empiric wisdom is not explained anywhere.

After saving my Basil Martini standard test image, I noticed my carefully spaced text was most unkindly shrunk together – the layout I meticulously designed was completely ruined in the save.

SayWhat

Believe it or not, the foremost thought bubble insertion program on the internet is WigFlip’s SayWhat, and I say that because this competitor currently dominates Google search for the keywords “photo bubbles” and “text bubble”. As the website’s homepage is littered with Google Ads, it’s not hard to glean their business model. The text reminds me of a dot matrix printer.

SayWhat is too quick and dirty. There’s barely any control of the boxes, besides allowing users to flip the caption up and down, or left and right. There doesn’t seem to be any control over shape either, as the bubble expands to accommodate submitted text, and shrinks when you delete it. This photo workshop suffers from a complete lack of creative options.

In summary, although all five of the competitors offer their services free, some of these outfits ask for donations, while others are sponsored by big companies as advertising vehicles. Some of these applications will upload photos directly from each user’s Facebook galleries, while other online programs require submission directly from the user’s computer. On the back end of the equation, the best web photo modifiers have multiple save options, and let users preserve their doctored images both inside and outside Facebook.

The Speech Bubble battle is raging on Facebook – which application will you choose?