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Thoughts on 50photos as a Social Object
Hugh McCloud, of GapingVoid fame recently posted some regurgitations about something called a “Social Object”. It’s a very interesting set of posts on how he’s applying the concept of a Social Object to his thing, his cartoons.
Apparently there are 5 principles of Social Objects. Also, I think I’m going to stop capitalizing it because otherwise it might become a buzzword which will sit next to “Web 3.0″ on a flashy sticker thingy in the upper right corner of every micro-blog in existence.
Anyway, the principles. I was thinking of how we might relate the 50 photos project to it. Here’s my thoughts:
- You should be able to define the social object your service is built around. This one is pretty easy, it’s the limited-run book(s). This blog and the writing surrounding it isn’t much of a concern, although I do like the fact that it’s a somewhat new movement of collective engagement. However, that’s not so much the social object, I don’t think. Hmm.
- Define your verbs that your users perform on the objects. For instance, eBay has buy and sell buttons. It’s clear what the site is for. “Buy” would probably be the verb of choice. It is our intention (the photographers and I) to sell these. From the photographer’s point of view it would be a resounding “sell”. Perhaps there’s something cooking here that’s scalable, organizational, and systematic which could turn into a different social object than just selling/buying the books. Interesting. But, back on point, the purpose for this first project is for people to first “buy” and then “share” them.
- How can people share the objects? Well, you have to purchase them first. Then, give them as gifts, set them on your tables and let people flip through them. Tell the story of how they came to be. It’s a good story. No, it’s a great story.
- Turn invitations into gifts. This one I’m not sure about yet. Perhaps, if this becomes a regular thing, the invitation would be to be a selected photographer for a book, but that seems focused on the wrong end. For the person buying the book, the greater value is the fact there’s a limited number of them in the world. There will probably never be another collection like it. An invitation to purchase is definitely a gift. However, for some reason that sounds very “corporate sales guy”-ish. Any ideas on this one?
- Charge the publishers, not the spectators. If people are buying the books to share them, either giving them as gifts or simply sharing them in their home, the charge is to the person who gave the money to publish. Nope, that doesn’t sound right. The true publishers are all making money, so I’m stumped on this one too. The person buying it, well, is buying it. I’m at a loss.
I’d love your feedback, especially on the last two. Please, join in the discussion and help make this project better. If we need a new social object, then great. If we need a new method, I’m all for it. If we’re doing fine and we just don’t fit the bill the same way, great. Let’s hear that too.
Thanks, in advance, for your input.
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6 comments for “Thoughts on 50photos as a Social Object”
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This whole project looks really awesome — I’m glad to see a few of my Flickr buddies in that list of photographers.
I’m curious though, what is the theme: “old” supposed to mean? How did you find the photographers? Will you be doing this again? With different photographers?
The really interesting thing about this concept is that the photographers would be quite motivated to help “sell” the book since they’re getting a kickback. But why only 50? What if this turns out to be way more popular than anticipated? A $500 paycheck is more enticing than a $50 paycheck from the photographer’s standpoint.
Anyways, just some thoughts — I’m interested to see how this thing turns out.
Hey Brian, thanks for the comment and the kudos. I’m super excited about this project, and I’d love it if you would pass it on. Once we get confirmation from the photographers who will be involved, we’ll start selling them. There will only be 50 available, so please be sure to get people involved and subscribing to the RSS feed for this site early.
There’s only going to be 50 because (a) this is a test project to see if there’s any excitement behind something like this and (b) to make sure the limited run helps justify the price.
If it turns out to be super popular, I guess I’ll have to go to my next high school reunion and say “neener neener” in their faces. Besides that, I’ll probably do another run using a different theme and different photographs. If it works, I’ll probably bring the next run up to 100 and so on until we find a good supply/demand ratio. I would love to pay the photographers more, but for this first attempt, 50 is a good test.
Thanks Brian! Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you spread the word about this (in case you feel like doing so).
From my perspective, this is not a “social” object, because of requirement 5. The interaction between the spectators and publishers is one-way: you publish, they choose to buy or not to buy, and the requirement to fund lies on the spectators.
If you wanted this site to be a “social object” you would have spectators vote on photos to be included in a book from a pool of photographs that photographers paid to be in. The photographers could get a cut of the photos, but the “membership costs” of the photographers would cover most of the overhead.
This site is however, a fantastic idea. It’s like a case study for using Creative Commons for profit.
You should also check out Morguefile.com for great photos. They focus more on stock photography, but I have found a lot of beautiful “art” on there.
Keep up the good work, nate.
Great thoughts Lach. Thanks! I think you’re right, and http://jpgmag.com is a great example of what you’re talking about. I didn’t exactly want to create the same thing, at least not yet.
I’m hoping there’s a similarity (because I love their concept), but I am also hoping for some feedback and ideas that might tweak it a little.
Anyway, thanks!
Nate, this idea rocks! I’ll be watching to see how it pans out for you. I’m currently running a large project through my blog called the December Challenge. Basically a large group of Flickr and Zooomr friends have committed to shoot a portrait-a-day for the month of December.
I’m considering putting together a similar book, and maybe sell them for charity.
Trevor,
That’s a fabulous idea. Thanks for the kudos. I am still working on putting everything together (as you can see), but I think with just a little more time, we could have a good thing here.
Everyone participating has been awesome and I’ve only had one person so far say “no”. That’s pretty sweet.