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Author Topic: Why Photos Rule The Internet  (Read 7499 times)

rcjordan

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Why Photos Rule The Internet
« on: March 21, 2015, 11:03:24 PM »
The answer to the question of why Google+ failed is simple. The answer is photos.  The big mistake Google+ made was in starting out as a place for people to have meaty in-depth discussions.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/why-photos-rule-the-internet
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ergophobe

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Re: Why Photos Rule The Internet
« Reply #1 on: March 22, 2015, 12:22:11 AM »
And yet, the people I knew who bought in most to G+ were pro photographers.

I suppose Instagram has completely killed that though. Not buying Instagram was one of Google's dummer moves. It is growing like mad, would have given that "photo" element and the avg Instagram user has a personal income of $51,000 per year (not household) and is quite young. Avg income of Instagrammers is a multiple of Facebook (where, of course, many users have almost no income at all b/c of age).  So though that number is close to the median household income in the US, this is individual income (if I recall correctly; could be wrong) and of course IG skews really young, so we're talking about people in general wealthy for their cohort.
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rcjordan

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Re: Why Photos Rule The Internet
« Reply #2 on: March 22, 2015, 01:30:54 AM »
>the people I knew who bought in most to G+ were pro photographers.
> meaty in-depth discussions

It's not a stretch to connect the dots there, though.  Pros weren't looking for a place to post their latest selfie or a buddy passed out next to the toilet.

I belong to a couple of FB groups and a forum (same subject for all: collectible vehicles). The forum is the oldest (both in terms of founding date and user demographics). It is, without question, THE place to go for technical knowledge.  I'll add that the forum format works well for cataloging this type of discussion.  Even though it is superior on all counts, it is getting killed by the FB groups.  The primary reason, I suppose, is the omnipresence of FB in millennials'  lives but ease of posting photos is a very close second. (Add to that the way FB scrapes linked pages and inserts them as images.)

>Facebook (where, of course, many users have almost no income at all

That was among the first things I noticed when I started FB. I thought the elder forum members were cheap. They look like spendthrifts compared to FB users.
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Brad

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Re: Why Photos Rule The Internet
« Reply #3 on: March 22, 2015, 12:00:08 PM »
It's the instant emotion of photos over words which you have to write, spell and think about. Emotion and ease wins with photos. Slap a cute cat on it or a dog or a nekkid or near nekkid selfie and you get instant emotions of, "Aw" or screams of terror.
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rcjordan

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Re: Why Photos Rule The Internet
« Reply #4 on: March 22, 2015, 01:16:37 PM »
>Slap a cute cat on it

Trademark violation!

>photos over words

Yeah, both composing and reading text is harder work --and in most cases, less descriptive-- than a photo.  Good cataloging (tagging, title, sub-forums, etc) adds to the work.  Laziness and the path-of-least-resistance are a big reason, too.  Have you tried to introduce a thirty-something to the forum format? We did, and they screamed it was too confusing or too hard to post or follow.  More than a few said it lacked pictures and they needed eye-candy (not their term) to sustain their interest.

<added>
Access by smartphones was a big factor, too.  Forums suck on phone screens.
« Last Edit: March 22, 2015, 01:19:26 PM by rcjordan »
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Brad

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Re: Why Photos Rule The Internet
« Reply #5 on: March 22, 2015, 02:29:47 PM »
>Trademark

Ahh, so that's where I nicked that from! 

I sometimes think the entire Internet has devolved to pics of cats and dogs followed, distantly by photos of people's drooling spawn. Of course sometimes it does rise to the level of Pure Art, like a vidie of a cat in a shark costume riding a Roomba. Take that Shakespeare.
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rcjordan

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Re: Why Photos Rule The Internet
« Reply #6 on: March 22, 2015, 03:20:59 PM »
>slap a cat on it

2010 is earliest I could find, but I don't think that's the original post

http://th3core.com/talk/traffic/another-google-ui-tweak/msg1287/#msg1287

Cat-slapping can get you fired, btw
http://th3core.com/talk/web-development/now-there's-no-escuse-slap-a-cat-on-it/

A few months ago, tech headlines were buzzing about G's new photo-deciphering program --how it could identify objects better than humans.  Given the on-going shift toward reliance upon images, I think that image interpretation will be incorporated into the serps.  Years ago, I tried photo-spamming on a large scale. It sorta worked but because of image search, not because the image's content was being used as a ranking factor.  I suspect we are on the brink of in-context images becoming a part of the serp algo.

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ukgimp

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Re: Why Photos Rule The Internet
« Reply #7 on: March 30, 2015, 10:13:50 AM »
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rcjordan

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Re: Why Photos Rule The Internet
« Reply #8 on: August 03, 2018, 05:04:08 PM »
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Mackin USA

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Re: Why Photos Rule The Internet
« Reply #9 on: August 03, 2018, 06:43:05 PM »
RC

That NYT post should be split into another thread IMFO

Very important topic...
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Mr. Mackin

ukgimp

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Re: Why Photos Rule The Internet
« Reply #10 on: August 04, 2018, 02:52:06 AM »
Yes, cut out news because we are losing as revenue.

Newspapers are great for some things but too slow. Up to the second news = Twitter
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aaron

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Re: Why Photos Rule The Internet
« Reply #11 on: August 05, 2018, 04:17:06 PM »
In the offline world TV is far more popular than picture books or reading.
https://www.recode.net/2018/7/18/17575156/mark-zuckerberg-interview-facebook-recode-kara-swisher
Quote from: The Zuck
Every 10 or 15 years a new one comes along. They’re always more native, they capture your human experience more. Immersively, you share more naturally what you’re experiencing. I just think that VR and AR are going to be a really big deal. You can just see this trajectory from early internet, when the technology and connections were slow, most of the internet was text. Text is great, but it can be sometimes hard to capture what’s going on. Then, we all got phones with cameras on them and the internet got good enough to be primarily images. Now the networks are getting good enough that it’s primarily video. At each step along the way, we’re able to capture the human experience with greater fidelity and richness

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buckworks

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Re: Why Photos Rule The Internet
« Reply #12 on: August 05, 2018, 11:00:48 PM »
A picture is worth a thousand words. A video is worth ___ ?
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Brad

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Re: Why Photos Rule The Internet
« Reply #13 on: August 06, 2018, 11:09:15 AM »
>thousand words

Sometimes.  At other times a good set of written instructions is invaluable and saves time, especially when you have to refer back to them.  A video as well as podcasts trap you in a linear backwards and forwards  information storage like trying to retrieve your data from a cassette tape on your TRS-80.

For all the abuse I've laid on Microsoft over the years, back in the DOS software days they could write one heck of a good manual.  If you needed to figure out how to do something it was there, step by step. 

Today, everybody tries to copy Apple and tell you next to nothing, except they are not as good as Apple at just making stuff work.
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rcjordan

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Re: Why Photos Rule The Internet
« Reply #14 on: August 06, 2018, 08:34:17 PM »
I believe videos have a slightly negative valuation by many/most? visitors.  I'm seeing more and more news sites putting up a video but also writing a full article to cover the story.  I can't say I've seen an increased use of photo stills in those articles, though.  My personal favorite, slideshows accompanied by good, verbose caption text *might* be on the uptick.
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