The Photo Bubble Battle On Facebook

Blabble, Superlame, Kyolo, Speachable SayWhat

Even though it's a free service, there are no less than five companies competing for your photo bubbling business on Facebook.

A war 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…

Well 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 right on top of their 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?

1. Blabble

The newest competitor is Blabble. Rethink Communications, on behalf of Solo Mobile, brought Blabble to the market. Blabble is a dedicated Facebook application that specializes in putting text on pictures. This software only uploads images from Facebook photo albums tol save Facebook users unnecessary transfer time and repetitive uploads. 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. Unfortunately Blabble's bubble sizing is entirely automated, which has its disadvantages. Users sometimes find themselves switching words and adding or subtracting punctuation to avoid misshapen boxes.

2. Superlame.com

Superlame has been letting users make 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' 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. Superlame was spawned by comic book lovers and was meant to be interpreted inside that particular visual genre.

3. Kyolo

Kyolo's 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 easy to use, and produces great results. 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.

4. 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.

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.

5. SayWhat

The foremost thought bubble insertion program on the internet is WigFlip's SayWhat, and currently dominates Google search for the keywords 'photo bubbles' and 'text bubble'.

SayWhat's software 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.