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Launched this week: DailyBooth, ‘your life in pictures - your picture, your face, every day for years’.

Downer antediluvian moments aside, the concept is kinda cool: take a picture of something every day, over time, and see how it changes. Your face, the house you’re building, your precious infant->baby->toddler… it’s not un-interesting. But will it fly as a social media app?

Pete Cashmore at Mashable seems cautious. He’s not sure high-speed, high-need web kids will have the persistence to post a photo every day. I agree — I think it’s unlikely that a critical volume of users will engage frequently and over a sustained period of time. But there’s more to it than that.

The DailyBooth approach removes the narrative of stories. Instead, it focuses on the minutiae of change; it’s also a slow burn. And this, to me, is where the medium and the message (I’m Canadian; I had to) fail to gel. Social apps really crackle when they connect people quickly and in urgent ways — how you feel about something, what you’re doing right now… and that isn’t what this one does.

caveat the first: Like many who still don’t fully understand the role of the parabola in day-to-day life, I maybe don’t put enough stock in the numbers. Various mathematical justifications (of pictures and 1000s of words) for DailyBooth are put forth on the site tour; these failed to sway me, but said tour did highlight…

caveat the second: Am I the only demi-narcissist in the house?! For every half-decent photo there are at least a dozen out-takes! Who a) has that kind of time, and b) knows their angles that well?

Sorry, DailyBooth, you’re not for me, but I wish you a long and pretty life all the same. Prove me wrong. (Until then, I’ll take my stories with words.)