The Photography Web-o-Sphere Sell-Out Trifecta
While I suppose this could be a useful “merger” of sorts, I expect what normally happens in these situations – Amazon will use all the years of content and review to sell more cameras. Commentary contributed as part of a network will now be used to generate more rampant consumerism, and we all lose, at least to some degree, a great independent information resource. Sure, DPreview has it’s share of advertising anyways – such a stellar resource should make some money for the folks that built it. But… Small Indy business gets bought by behemoth… never a good result. see #3 below for the kind of shit that can result here.
2. JPG Magazine founders pushed out by punk CEO, who rewrote the history of a totally user-generated project, alienating most of the people who made it a success. He also removed any mention of founders role or the first 6 issues that were really grass-roots generated. The exodus has already begun. But it’s a shame. What could have been a great project from the roots of the internet is sabotaged by a greedy CEO on its knees for that great web 2.0 money stream.
3. Flickrahoo! takes down users plea for help after she’s blatantly ripped off
Popular Flickr personality gets her images stolen and sold for thousands of dollars: That sucks. She posts to Flickr for advice, to warn others of the rotten company, etc: Obvious thing to do. She then gets the post killed by Flickr because “Flickr is not a venue for to you harass, abuse, impersonate, or intimidate others. If we receive a valid complaint about your conduct, we will send you a warning or terminate your account.“: Salt in Wound.
I’ve been a Flickr member for a rather long time. This is the kind of thing that started happening once they were bought by Yahoo!. Another example of corporate-shill-ness: yahoo integrates users Flickr images into crappy ad site for Wii.
JRB’s take on the trifecta: The photography field is feeling what the whole Web 2.0 “I’m-a-creator!”-bonanza splurge-fest is about to feel… Social networks, at least once they partner with are acquired by the giants, showing themselves for what most of them are: “user-generated content.”
Translation of “user-generated content”: The web is full of people who are still so excited to see their shit online that they’ll give it to us for free and we can sell it back to them all day long. We don’t need to hire editors, writers, photographers or artists anymore, these suckers will do it for free and thank us everyday. And when it comes time to defend them we’ll run to our be-Starbucks-ed lawyers and take their inevitable advice to shut up, do the smart thing and censor, remove or otherwise screw our user-base.
It’s a goddam shame, let’s be more aware of it…
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