(Photo credit @purzlbaum)
Welcome to all the recent new subscribers, and a thank you to those who have been here from the beginning. I’ve been outdoors a lot this summer, taking waaay too many photos of my random hikes & adventures, partly to share, partly to serve as a ‘physical’ memory. Since I didn’t travel as much this past year, I’ve also been (digitally) flipping through old photo albums too, dreaming of when I can do another big trip abroad. My guess is that many of you are doing the same thing. You may also want to take a few minutes to think about where you are sharing & storing all those memories!
#techtopic
With 2 big photo-related announcements recently from Google and Facebook, I’m curious to see the impact on how individuals/consumers experience and store photos & memories moving forward.
A few weeks ago, Instagram officially announced it is trying to become TikTok. It’s not surprising that Facebook has decided to ride the increasingly popular video wave that Tiktok unleashed. Completing its transition from just photos to an entertainment app. (Will FB now go the route of original content development (ala the ill-fated Quibi)? Or only stay as a platform for creators of all types to share their own content?)
If you want to keep sharing just photos, here is a great list of Instagram app alternatives for photographers -- and fascinating that Twitter is first on their list. And if you want to try an app where you can share photos but that bans selfies, check out Poparazzi.
This article makes an interesting point tho: is this pivot to video something users want, or is it simply the next step in an ad-driven social media model? I also wonder if there will be a user rebound back to photos, once the majority of us are not in lockdown. My guess is that video has increased in popularity because we’re all stuck at home, it’s more engaging/entertaining, and what else did you have to do? But when you’re engaged back in life again someday soon, will you have the same amount of time to surf videos? Or will you naturally revert back to consuming more static content again? Facebook, TikTok and others are betting on the former. I recently joined Faves which has a different take on content sharing/curation -- more on that in a future newsletter.
The other big change came from Google who imposed stricter photo storage limits as of Jun 1. We all know that with a phone, you take zillions of crappy photos and keep them all “just in case.” Very few of us curate our photo collections (especially when you include snapshots, selfies, etc), and with Google Photos machine learning, I can search for my dog and all the cute photos appear (without me having to curate). With this new photo storage limit, consumers may be searching for alternatives. The Verge and Tom’s Guide have two comprehensive articles to help with evaluating new services. Or if you’re really motivated, try self-hosting your own photo storage site. Either way, you could do your own analysis of your photo habits, and try to determine what you photograph more: objects or selfies? And ponder what that says about you?
