Twitpic, Instagram, Flickr & Facebook - Got the Picture?

For some reason, I know that I started using Twitpic three years ago today.

You could care less and I don't blame you.

So in addition to pointing to my first Twitpic, most viewed Twitpic and one or two others illustrating this post, I'll make some observations about photo sharing platforms in general.

You may not care about this either. But the odds just shifted significantly.

All Bets Are Off
Just a few short months ago it seems we could classify platforms based on what you did there: social networking, photo sharing, publishing. But even then it didn't acknowledge LinkedIn's focus on business, Facebook's ginormous user base, Flickr's deep community and Say Media's killer Ad Network.

And as these sites have evolved, so have consumer habits. Case in point: the second most used search engine is YouTube and not Yahoo. Yahoo's busy competing with AOL as they try to become content players instead of what they built their brands on respectively.

Assumptions Make Us Stoopid
I'm not being nostalgic with the above observations. My point is to dig deeper and go beyond commonly-held beliefs. Platforms evolve quickly...more quickly than the dot com days.

We assume that teens do nothing more than text. That's a safe assumption since the number of text messages sent and received each day exceeded the population of the earth -- in 2007. But it's not safe to assume they don't watch TV. They simply text while doing it. It's called a multi-screen experience.

So while Flickr and the other two top photo sharing platforms combined are dwarfed by Facebook when it comes to number of images hosted, this is more than a quantity discussion. Consider what else Flickr provides its users. That's why they're still around today -- in blatant defiance of The Highlander Complex. And if that reason ties to your target audience it's a viable option for your consideration.

Less is Even More
Twitpic and Instagram are other disruptions in the photo sharing discussion. Suddenly my iPhone can take and edit pictures that look better than the ones I take with my camera. And it's obviously easier to share those pictures. As we see a trend of consumers that are more into documenting the experience than the experience itself, we need to consider what that means.

This is all part of a larger discussion around content and what value it delivers the consumer and their role in creating it. Content is king oversimplifies the discussion. You have to consider the consumer, which then drives how and where you serve up "his majesty." And it doesn't even begin to take into consideration concepts like sharing and curation.

Slowly Unveiling a Story
The short form, heavily-social Twitpic, Instagram and others offer opportunities to tell very short stories. Tagging helps fashion those stories into volumes. Two interesting examples of sites trying to tap into this are Hash Album and a promotional site set up by Brisk for SXSW, BriskPic. It was a crowd-sourcing/packaging test by Pepsi. Did they learn from it? Let's assume yes. But don't underestimate the power of simplicity when it comes to images. Could they replace a news release? Depends on the news. Much like Twitter, it's forcing communications to be stronger, yet shorter. Our skills increase as consumer attention spans shrink.

What examples have you seen of brands tapping into photo sharing in a way that added to their message? 

Comments

[Chris Vannoy]

Just wanted to throw out a service you didn't mention (and I hope you don't mind) for aggregating photos.

I made, run and support http://montabe.com, a service that can aggregate and display photos from multiple sources, including Twitter, email and MMS.

I built it for much the same reasons you talk about: being able to find the stories in the photos posted to Twitter, regardless of the actual location of the images. You can see some example galleries on the demo account (http://demo.montabe.com ... the tornado gallery is a favorite).

There's a real value, I think (or I wouldn't be doing this), is a live-updating tap into what people are seeing and posting from an event, conference or breaking news event. It can also be useful from a PR perspective, both in demonstrating why an event is the place to be at while the event is actually going on, or simply collecting all the detritus of photos your clients may already be producing.

Thanks for the roundup that taps into a lot of the things I'm already thinking about.

[dave]

I am not sure if it is an age thing or not; but I struggle to keep up with it all.

I grew up with computers (in the 80's when sega and nintendo where sparing with the atari linx) but find that with all the new additions of networking sites, file sharing sites, computer consoles and mobiles.

I remember when I was 18, mobile phones started to make a real mark (I am 33 now) but now there are 100's of types you struggle to keep up.

From a marketing perspective, where do you go? Do you use twitter, youtube, Facebook, Linkedin, or any of the 100's of others or all of them?

Talking to different PR agencies it is confusing for most people what platform to use, or to use them all. In one sense, you could spend the best part of a day updating that your life slips away.

Am I alone in this mindset?

[jackie]

Visuals really do take storytelling to the next level, which makes photo sharing platforms like Instagram a very valuable tool from a PR perspective. Everything is about "real time" these days. Photo sharing caters to that real time trend. It gives brands a quick means to tell their story through images in the moment. The Instagram platform also allows brands to gain real time insights into how consumers are interacting with their products.

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