
Dedicated photo blogs are dead. Social networks are the future. Interaction is everything. Contacts and networking are the currency of the web. Be there or be squared -
A lot of things were happening last year. More than the 17.000 followers I've gained in Google+ wouldn't be possible at AM3, but at some point you realize that your stream has become a big image machine, eating your photos and the photos of the people you're following. There are mass phenomena, elitist circles, there's coterie. And there's the opposite: real people you would love to meet in real life and drink a beer with. To become known is rather easy, but to stay known is an art. Social nets are constantly growing, and to stay in people's focus is hard work. In the blink of an eye people start loving you or they're flooding your stream with hatred. I will summarize some of my insights in future postings.
My (old) coffee-table book of selected postings.
More MadScientist: eclecticimaging.tumblr.com, the guy behind this blog
@Japanalia: Thank you! After an age of dark, grey skies I was really thankful for these rare sunrays.
@Ted: It's a matter of condition, I think. For more than a year I was networking on steroids, a.k.a. curating one of the more popular weekly themes. It brought me a lot of people to follow, even more followers, many lovable friends and a few not so lovable folks. But you have to keep pace, day by day. That was a bit much after several months, even if you distribute work among four or five people, and it took many hours of spare time. In the end it's a cost-benefit calculation, but I'm not sure what this kind of popularity in a large social network really means.
@Curly: Oh, Curly, this is horrible! My prayers are with you and your family.
It's indeed time consuming: I've spent a big part of my Sundays in curating a populare theme at Google+, it brought me many friends and lots of popularity, but you also realize the not so beautiful side effects and the monotony of commenting on images, no matter how good they are. In the meantime I've returned to a slower pace and spend more time on other things, like taking photos.
(And yes, I've seen a lot of beautiful churches, too.)
@Abena: Thanks so much, Abena! It's not that I don't like these giant networks, but they are real image eating machines. At the end it was just too much, all filtering mechanismus aside. I'm pausing a bit at the moment.