Old photos – horrific experiences or great fun? Whatever you think when you recognize yourself on an old photo I’m sure it evokes certain emotions. I think it’s a great fun to rummage in old photo albums with friends – sometimes wondering how different we looked when we where younger or just remembering good times we spent together. That is why I try to have my digital camera with me whenever possible to catch all the versatile chapters in life. Over the years my computer became my digital photo album which I can organize easily thanks to the technical development.

Welcome to the online photography world

If you not only want to share your photos with your family and friends at home Flickr gives you the easy opportunity to share them with the whole internet (klick here to read wikipedia’s description). To say it with Amy Shuen’s words: “Flickr essentially gives away the services that amateur photographers need and want most: Photo sharing; online storage; and indexing, tagging and photo inventory.”

But Flickr is not only to the amateur photographer’s advantage who can organize his photos, drops into a creative photo database or may even be discovered if talented – it is an interesting communication platform from the corporate perspective, too.

Flickr stream: “Michel Comte Retrospektive”

I’m sure you have heard of Michel Comte, one of the most sought-after fashion and magazine photographers in the world (he portrays numerous celebrities from the world of art, music and entertainment. In addition to portrait photography and fashion he moved towards photo-reportage and documentary). Currently, the exhibition “Michel Comte Retrospektive” can be visited in the ‚NRW-Forum Kultur und Wirtschaft’ in Duesseldorf, Germany.

Michel Comte – 360° from nrwforumduesseldorf on Vimeo.

To promote the exhibition a number of Web. 2.0 tools were used like communication via the website of the ‘NRW Forum’ and a blog which reflects the course of the exhibition. But the most noteworthy idea was to create a Flickr stream. Especially in this case it was a very good idea to put a photo show on Flickr – a platform where all the passionate photographer’s come together to share and exchange their experiences about photography. Doubtlessly, these people are the prospective visitors of the exhibition. To my mind a promising step in the communication concept of the exhibition.

Benefit from Flickr as a professional

To end up for today I’d like to point out two tips of Seth Godin how you can benefit from Flickr as a professional. You will find a full description of them in his blog post ‘Where to find great ideas and arresting images (for free)’:

1. If you need photos for a presentation or website or brochure, try Flickr.

2. When you are trying to brainstorm, Flickr is a great place to find connections between ideas that hadn’t occurred to you.

Why not try them out on the job floor?

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It’s amazing! Without great effort I’m already an integral part of the Web 2.0 business economy. Because of my blog? Far from it. Because of my facebook profile? Far from it. There’s a much more simple reason for it. Let’s check some of my web activities within the last week:

Monday: I sent an email via Windows
Life Messenger and bought some books at amazon.co.uk

Tuesday: I sold my old mobile phone on ebay and bought some DVDs there

Wednesday: I searched for information on Wikipedia and googled a journal article

Today: I called my friends in Germany via Skype

I could easily go on like this! To put it into a nutshell: There has been hardly any day within the last weeks… months…let’s say even the last year (maybe even years?) without network
effects caused through my usual web activities.

Curse and blessing of ‘traffic’

I really like the following quote of Amy
Shuen in her book ‘Web
2.0: A Strategy Guide – Business thinking and strategies behind successful Web
2.0 implementations.’ (by the way: as this is already my second quote of Shuen’s book you see I’m really satisfied reading it. It’s a great, very well written book I really like to recommend to every PR student who deals with Web 2.0) “FOR MOST OF US IN THE REAL (OFFLINE) WORLD, TRAFFIC IS A BAD THING. More cars on the highway at rush hour create negative network effects. Each driver reduces the quality of the experience by congesting and overloading the highway network past its limit. But in the online world, traffic is a powerfully good thing.” Just try to picture it! Her figure of speech is great.

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What Shuen refers to: There’s no doubt that positive network effects increase the value of a good or service the more people use it (To get an idea of it: A well known theory illustrating this is Metcalfe’s
law stating about the value of communication). Positive network effects created the Web 2.0 network platforms and contributed the online hypergrowth of networks such as Google, Yahoo!, ebay, Skype, Wikipedia, Craigslist, Flickr and other.

Apropos: Why not watch Amy
Shuen talking about network effects herself? For me it was very interesting to see this famous lecturer in person – but be aware that it’s more an informative video than an animating film! Suen has
got a blog, too. Unfortunately, it has not been updated for a longer period of time.

What comes to your mind first?

Let’s go back to where I started: I just followed this train of thought about my web activities within the last week because it seems to me as if many people think they aren’t a part of the Web 2.0 business economy at first glance. In fact, they are! Just to give you an idea about two of the web services I used last week: ebay counts 86 million active and Skype 400 million registered users (see
source).

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Not bad! Nevertheless, I cannot help feeling that people first notice all these social networks like Facebook or MySpace when thinking about Web 2.0. activities. I sometimes even catch me thinking the same although I know it better!