Is It Better?
SlideRocket spent the last year in private beta and is now open to anyone on the interwebs. SlideRocket is a presentation creator, similar to what you would use on PowerPoint and for free, it even hosts your presentations and you can install an offline player for when you’re traveling sans wi-fi and you can import .ppt files. SlideShare is an online community where you can upload presentations and see others’, it is not a presentation creator so it isn’t necessarily better or worse (but I’ve heard people opine on which was better).
I’ve been using SlideRocket as a photo editor for most of my images here on AG lately and I especially love the font package (delicious bolded is my fave font there) and transition options. SlideRocket offers a more polished presentation creation than most and is perfect for presenting a neighborhood, a home tour or a recent local event- what will you use it for?
Lani is the COO and News Director at The American Genius, has co-authored a book, co-founded BASHH, Austin Digital Jobs, Remote Digital Jobs, and is a seasoned business writer and editorialist with a penchant for the irreverent.
Spanish Fork Townhomes
September 30, 2008 at 9:27 am
A lot of these video websites are getting better as technology is getting better. This is a great asset to those who are in the real estate industry as they can showcase their real estate team as well as the homes that they have on the market.
Chris de Jong
September 30, 2008 at 9:49 am
Another fantastic presentation creator is 280Slides. It works just like Apple’s Keynote for those who work primarily with Macs and is incredibly versatile. You can share, embed, and download presentations, and it also lets you import presentations from your desktop or flash drive to edit anywhere – which is great when you need to make tweaks at the last minute!
Marissa Louie
September 30, 2008 at 10:52 am
Hi Lani! Love your tweets btw – they’re hilarious!
I happen to work at SlideShare right now and I tend to agree with you- it has a great community and content. SlideRocket is more so a tool, and not a direct competitor.
Cheers!
Marissa
Todd
September 30, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Been using Slideshare for a long time because it is easy for people to make embeds of existing presentations. Also have been using and recommending Scribd ( https://scribd.com ) for people that have existing presentations but are stuck with just Microsoft Office for creation.
geovani
September 30, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Overall SlideRocket is a very attractive and capable product that does indeed match and exceed the expectations set by PowerPoint. There’s a slew of impressive features I could mention: the ability to import your own fonts, the many different layouts, the special effects for objects such as videos and photos, and the asset library that can be searched by keyword, to name a few. SlideRocket also has pretty sophisticated analytics tool that let slideshow creators track who and how many people have viewed their shows, as well as how long each spent on particular slides.
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geovani
Daniel Bates
September 30, 2008 at 4:58 pm
One thing I don’t like about the slideshows is that you loose some of the SEO that you could be getting from all those pictures in the form of alt tags, file names, and captions. I much prefer a plugin like nextgen gallery where users can select either multipicture or slideshow mode. The slide show might be a little faster (maybe not) and more compact, I guess it’s just personal preference. Any thoughts?
Paula Henry
September 30, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Lani – It seemed to load slow for me, but I am sitting in teh middle of Phoenix using a wireless card. I can definately see some great uses for this, a listing presenatation online – for one. Thanks for testing everything first. 🙂
Jay Thompson
September 30, 2008 at 10:55 pm
That’s wicked cool.
And what great photos in your SlideRocket!! 😉
Doug Devitre
September 30, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Okay Lani. You inspired me. I have been using slide share because it works great with WordPress but the geek in me wanted to at least give SlideRocket a shot. My presentation did take quite a bit longer but the emphasis using video, effects, and sharing has taken it to a whole new level. My new concept will help reform REALTOR Association and the way they serve their members. Thank you so kindly for sharing this information in your post. Here is my slideshow I produced using SlideRocket. https://app.sliderocket.com/app/FullPlayer.aspx?id=cfcff5b3-d008-4449-8524-777eb406458a
Jack Leblond
October 1, 2008 at 6:57 am
From an SEO perspective; Yes, it would be better to have of the individual slides broken out as separate pages on your web site. Having said that though – the primary reason for doing a slide-show is so *YOU* can present it to a crowd, not so you can post in on your site. Slide-shows are not meant to be stand-alone products (even though many people use them for that). If you post one on your site, be sure to surround it with descriptive text of what the viewer will find inside. Create an image of one of the screens to use as the link to launch the presentation (if possible), then you can use an alt-tag and proper link titles to get a little SEO back…..OK, I’ve now ranted twice about embedded media and SEO…maybe I should quit ranting and post something about how I think you should do it.
BTW – Yes, Lani’s tweets are funny…but wait till you get a four-part DM from her that leaves you scratching your head.