By John Cook
Geekwire.com
Facebook is great for keeping up with friends. But once you post a photo or status update, those memories can quickly fade into the digital ether. YearlyLeaf is hoping to help preserve those precious moments, creating a leather-bound book that pulls content directly from one’s Facebook profile.
But will the digital generation — who already chronicle their lives via Facebook — balk at paying for an old-school memory book?
Mark Michael, the co-founder of Seattle startup DevHub and the creator of YearlyLeaf, thinks there’s plenty of opportunity for Facebook users to put their digital musings into printed form. But how exactly does it work?
“We use the new Facebook Graph API’s to automatically pull in all of the relevant posts, images and comments for the year,” explains Michael. “The user then uses our easy interface to choose which friends they would like to include/exclude in the book and which apps to show posts from. The pages of the books are then automatically designed and formatted.”
Michael says it will only take a few minutes to suck in the relevant content, which is used to form the basis of the book.
The average cost of the books — described as a “coffee table book meets a Moleskine for the Facebook set” — depends on the number of pages. But Michael estimates the average price tag will be roughly $25. (YearlyLeaf is also working on a free version where customers could print a small book from a home printer).
YearlyLeaf just started accepting early reservation requests, and the company plans to launch the full version in the coming weeks.
There are certainly plenty of places where people can go to create physical photo books. But Michael says YearlyLeaf is different.
“We specialize in telling a user's whole social story, not just pictures, but check-ins, status updates, comments and relationships,” he says.
John Cook is co-founder of GeekWire. Follow on Twitter: @geekwirenews and Facebook.
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