The chroniclers of narcissism: Daily Mugshot vs. Daily Booth
If you want to see how you progress throughout the year in pictures, you have two options: Daily Mugshot or Daily Booth. But if you want to find out which is best for you, we have the answer.
If you're a Twitter user, you've probably seen tweets directing you to a person's "Mugshow." This is yet another Web gimmick that makes you scratch your head when you first learn about it, but over time it begins to make a modicum of sense. Think of it as the essence of Twitter, in pictures. Kinda.
Both Daily Mugshot and Daily Booth ask that you come back to the site once per day, take a snapshot of yourself, and publish it in your timeline of pictures. You can add comments to your pictures, share them with others, and view other users' pictures. That's it. Twitpic they ain't, but they are fun.
Maybe you find the concept ridiculous. But if you don't, which one should you use -- Daily Mugshot or Daily Booth?
It's time to find out.
Design
On Daily Booth, I felt trapped in my Dashboard, on account of the site's poor navigation design. And although my profile page included a list of those I'm following and those that were following me, Daily Booth didn't make it simple to find other users' galleries.
Daily Mugshot is better. Finding users couldn't have been easier. Getting to the page to take a picture was a cinch. Overall, it has a better design and interface
Design winner: Daily Mugshot
Snapping
When it comes to taking a picture, Daily Booth easily bests Daily Mugshot. Though I liked the latter's implementation and its tutorial on how to frame the picture was helpful, Daily Booth made it simpler.Once you click "Snap a picture" in Daily Booth, you need only to allow the service to access your webcam and you're ready to go. It even gives you the option of snapping the picture immediately or waiting three seconds. Daily Mugshot uses a time delay by default, which isn't always helpful when you're trying to frame the perfect shot.
After you take the picture, Daily Mugshot offers the option to add a caption, but I found that limiting after using Daily Booth, which allows you to add much more information about the picture.
Snapping winner: Daily Booth
After-picture tips
Once you snap a picture in Daily Mugshot and save it, you'll be brought to a page that lets you add "landmarks." Landmarks are placed on your picture to help you line up the next day's shot so your eyes and head are in the same spot each day.
It's a simple addition, but it's something that Daily Booth doesn't provide and should, since the whole point of these services is to compare your look. If you're in a different position in each picture, it's difficult to do that. Unfortunately, Daily Booth doesn't provide any after-picture tips and simply brings you to the page where your picture timeline is. It was a conspicuous omission.
After-picture tips winner: Daily Mugshot
Community
I spent some time searching through the communities on each site and found that, once again, Daily Mugshot was best. The site's users seem more active. Finding them was made simple with the help of filters that modify results based on the number of mugshots users have taken or when the last mugshot was snapped. When I searched for all users, the site displayed over 600 result pages.
On the other hand, Daily Booth made it practically impossible to find anyone. Though its filter features allowed me to search based on gender, age, and relationship status, there simply aren't as many available users to search through. Finding people was more difficult than it was on Daily Mugshot, since the site makes it so hard to navigate away from the Dashboard. It just wasn't convenient.
Community winner: Daily Mugshot
Snapshot display
When you search for another user on Daily Booth, you can click on their username and see every picture they've taken listed on their dashboard. It's a fine way to look at their pictures and comments, but compared to Daily Mugshot, I quickly realized that it wasn't ideal.
Instead of showing images in a list format, Daily Mugshot displays images in a gallery player that automatically scrolls through pictures individually. It helps you see the differences between the pictures and compare changes in the person's look. And isn't that the whole point of this site anyway?
Snapshot display winner: Daily Mugshot
Features and add-ons
Daily Booth features an outstanding set of features and add-ons. If you're in the car and you want to snap a photo of yourself with your iPhone, you can send it to a unique email address created just for your account. Along with the photo, you can send a write-up about it and within minutes, it will be placed into your timeline. Daily Booth also lets you create a YouTube video with the pictures in your timeline. With the help of some basic embed code, you can even add your pictures to a website or blog.
Daily Mugshot offers similar features. You can email a picture from your mobile phone to Daily Mugshot and the site will put it up for you. If you want to be reminded when it's time to take another picture, it will send you a reminder. You can also upload your pictures to Facebook or place your Mugshow on any blog with embed code the site generates for you.
Features and add-ons winner: Tie. The features and add-ons are basically the same.
The overall winner
At first glance, it's difficult to find differences between Daily Booth and Daily Mugshot. Both allow you to capture photos of yourself daily and they both do a nice job of letting you send them around the Web. But once I dug a little deeper and got into the finer points of these sites, it became clear almost immediately that Daily Mugshot was the best service to capture your daily images.
With a better design and outstanding implementation that makes it fun and worth using, Daily Mugshot is simply a more robust and worthwhile service.