Do a Google/Bing/Spotlight search for – Digital Yearbook – and you will get ten pages of search results. Of course, keep going past page ten and what I will be discussing below just keeps occurring. I ran out of steam at page twenty-two, so I’ll focus on the first search page. Who typically goes past the first page anyway?
So, it seems that there is an awful lot of DIGITAL YEARBOOKS on the market… or is there? You are going to be surprised.
The first page is emblematic of what kind of ‘Digital Yearbook’ is available and it is NOT what you think and it certainly is NOT what you are searching for. Let me give you some examples.
My first result was Jostens, the largest of the Print Legacy Yearbook companies in the industry. They produce fantastic print yearbooks, although, at a high price. They also are very prominent in the graduation products space (gowns, diploma cases, school rings, etc.). Having such a dominant spot in the search results for Digital Yearbooks, you would expect that they HAVE a Digital Yearbook.
If you do, you will be disappointed. I am going to go into maybe more detail here than I should, but this very first example is typical of a mess the Digital Yearbook industry is in and why finding a real Digital Yearbook is such a nearly impossible.
A few years ago, Jostens introduced a ‘companion’ digital product for their print yearbook called ‘ReplayIt. The explanation of what it actually is takes over one hundred words on their website! I’ll condense it for you: Jostens will host a site for the school. Students can then upload pictures to the site. It’s a neat idea. This allows for a diverse collection of images, like a big Facebook page. There, I explained it in 27 words. Anytime a company needs over 100 words to explain a product like ReplayIt, there is often an issue. They use a second party software suite (HP Aurasma) to do this.
While a nice addition to their print yearbook offering, ReplayIt is NOT A DIGITAL YEARBOOK! It is a collection of pictures that is going to get very unwieldy to look through once there are more than 50 images or so uploaded. ReplayIt is free and it is a good idea and a great supplement to a print yearbook, but again, Jostens is suggesting that they have an answer for the giant digital demand that exists in the current yearbook market. The reality, as will be discussed below, is that Jostens, and all the other print yearbook companies CANNOT introduce a REAL, authentic Digital Yearbook because it will cannibalize their high revenue print product.
And here is where things start to get a little concerning. Jostens says students ‘will enjoy continued, long-term access to the content on ReplayIt after the school year ends.’ If you were a lawyer, you would ask exactly what ‘long-term access’ means. YearBoxx is has ‘long-term access’, but we are just a little more specific as to what ‘long-term’ means… ‘YearBoxx provides LIFE TIME ACCESS.’ While we aren’t going to put an actual date on LIFE TIME access, our 80 year plan is that grand children will have access to their grandparents YearBoxx!
But things get just a little more complicated. While doing my research about ReplayIt, I ran into the following issues. One search for Jostens ReplayIt says, “ReplayIt Time Capsule has been sealed. We are no longer accepting new photos or registrations. Visit Jostens.com for yearbook information.” Visiting Jostens.com has no information about ReplayIt. As a matter of fact, there is NO information about ReplayIt on the entire website. I was unable to find the ReplayIt app on the Play Store and on other search results for – Yearbook Instructions for ReplayIt, I get a deadlinks.
I applaud a fine company like Jostens realizing that their customers want a digital yearbook, ReplayIt just is not the product they want. Gen Z wants a REAL, dedicated Digital Yearbook that has all the beloved features the print yearbook has (oh… like a senior section, clubs, sports, events, etc.) as well as the exciting features only digital can offer, like unlimited material, embedded video, updatability, immediate access, connectivity, etc. My research suggests that ReplayIt is not available anymore? I’ll keep looking into this and report back if I am wrong.
The other Legacy Companies (the large, 100 plus year old yearbook printers – Balfour, Herff-Jones and Walsworth) also offer ‘Digital Yearbooks.’ The good news is that they are digital yearbooks. The bad news is that they are PDF Yearbooks. That means they digitize a print yearbook into a PDF file that can be viewed on digital devices, the most relevant of which is the cellphone.
Three quarters of the search results on the first page are companies that offer PDF yearbooks. While I do celebrate companies for doing this and for recognizing the market demand for a Digital Yearbook, a PDF version is not a great solution. Why?
Imagine taking your 8 ½ x 11 print yearbook and reducing it down to the size of your phone? What you get is a page that has upwards of 8 pictures on it, each one very small. Yes, you can swipe aggressively to frame and enlarge one of the pictures, but after doing that a few times, you will just lose interest. There is no way to navigate around the file to find people and events. The experience is simply not pleasant.
There are also several companies that offer Flip Book yearbooks. Those are PDF yearbooks that the viewer can navigate by touching the right corner of the screen and ‘Flipping’ the page. Hardly next generation stuff.
The first search page (do you ever move on to a second search page?) for Digital Yearbooks also has companies that simply do not offer a Digital Yearbook, yet are ranked very high in the search for Digital Yearbooks. For example, Entourage is a fantastic print yearbook company. They have been around for a fraction of the time of the Legacy Companies but are innovative, up to 30% cheaper and produce a great product. But they DO NOT offer a Digital Yearbook. The closest thing to ‘digital’ they have is offering a few QR codes that will link to a short video.
A company called SchoolFlicker shows up number 8 in my Digital Yearbook search and they got me a little excited. They say on their sight; “SchoolFlicker is a FREE digital, paperless yearbook for schools, created straight from a phone and includes profiles with picture, video and audio.” FREE sounds really good! Oops, they will let the school create the yearbook for free, but if a student wants one, they have to BUY IT! There is no pricing on the site. I’m not a big fan of that kind of business.
They seem to offer a real Digital Yearbook though. However, all, but one of the images of their product is just artwork renderings which raises red flags. They are not clear as to what can be put into their Digital Yearbook, and they don’t show prices for their ‘FREE’ yearbook. So, wanting to know more, I called them. Their line has been disconnected. I entered on Google Earth their address… there is now a gym in their space!
Well, that’s alright because right below them on page one is YearbookLife. The first page on their webpage says, “Why a Digital Yearbook? · Environmentally Responsible · Kids Love Mobile Technology · Every Event is Included in Your Yearbook · Fully Interactive.” I could not agree more!
Just below that great quote is a logo for – Liquid Yearbook. I love that name! It looks like I’m finally getting a real result for a DIGITAL YEARBOOK. However, just below the big round logo is the following: Coming Soon, followed by ‘The Yearbook of the Future’! Yikes, I can’t wait. And just below that it says, “This product is currently not available”!!! This page has been posted for at least a year.
Not to be deterred, I engaged their Chat. Someone responded immediately to my quarry. After answering several questions, I was asked what I was interested in. It typed in, “I’d love to hear more about Liquid Yearbook? Whom ever I was chatting with disappeared. I waited… and waited… yes, it kinda hurt my feelings. Was it something I said?
YES, it was. A asked about a product this company was advertising but seems to have no intention of delivering. They are using the publics interest in Digital Yearbooks to lure people to their website and then try to sell them their print yearbook. MORE deceptive advertising.
Classmates.com shows up frequently in the Digital Yearbook search, sometimes on page one, often on page two. What does this company have to do with digital yearbooks? NOTHING! They collect old yearbooks, digitize them, and sell them. What a great idea, but, their product is a PDF, NOT a Digital Yearbook. They do NOT produce new yearbooks, just copies of old ones. Their marketing is very aggressive!
And then, as I went deeper into the next pages of the search results, most of results were like the following link: West Orange Public Library; The West Orange Public Library has begun digitizing the West Orange High Schools’ Yearbooks with a local history grant from the Essex County Division of Culture.
The overwhelming results for a Digital Yearbook search, over ten, twenty, thirty plus pages, are for schools offering a PDF copy of old print yearbooks on the school’s website that have been digitized. Of course, these are not the Digital Yearbook you and I are searching for and are not for NEW, yet to be created yearbooks.
I am now 1461 words into this blog and should probably give you my take away from what I have learned during my odyssey into the current world of Digital Yearbooks. There is not a single purpose created, cloud-based, interactive, DIGITAL YEARBOOK on the market… except for YearBoxx. The search for DIGITAL YEARBOOKS is so cluttered that it is useless.
Every print yearbook CEO who I have spoken with has, off the record, told me that they will not introduce a real Digital Yearbook because it will cannibalize their print sales. Unfortunately, they are right. How do they charge on average $75 per copy for a last generation product when YearBoxx is offering a far more relevant NEXT GENERATION product for $6.99?
They yearbook industry is changing. Digital has disrupted many other industries (when was the last time you listened to a vinyl record?). I hope print yearbooks will not go away, I think they still have a place in student’s hearts… however, a very low priced, highly relevant digital product like YearBoxx will is going to change, in a very positive way, how students remember a most iconic year in their lives. YearBoxx is the first and only Digital Yearbook that was DESIGNED right from the beginning to be viewed on a cellphone (and tablet/laptop) and to have embedded video, to be updatable, to be connected, to offer unlimited material… to be INEXPENSIVE! YearBoxx is a TRUE DIGITAL YEARBOOK and is a STAND-ALONE YEARBOOK.
YearBoxx is a new company. We are spending a good deal of money on marketing and the early results are exciting. Fairly soon we will appear on the page 1 of a Digital Yearbook search, but until them, we will let the market know that we are around in an organic and ethical way.
Tom Kehoe, Founder
Please let me know your thoughts:
tkehoe@idiomyb.com
