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Last year I hosted over 25 photo walks organized through Instagram and about half of these were branded “experiences.” I did this to learn more about photography, marketing and working with brands. It was a fun experience but not so fun realizing I helped generate millions in revenue and just got an Instagram mug from it. 😀

I was able to reach a large audience for a fraction of the cost of a TV commercial (< 50%) , and was able to produce measurable and actionable results.

Here’s some data from the Stolichnaya photo walk which had the hashtag #stolioriginal :
https://gist.github.com/barce/f541cc4612ec9b11da1f

followers 234564
likes       9328
posts         67
guests        32


1240 (drinks & food)
1200 hotel + flight for organizer

$2440 for 234,564 viewers
$0.010


Commercial for a show like Two and a Half Men
$215,000 per 30 second commercial
8.5 million viewers
$0.025 per viewer

In one evening Stoli was able to reach over 200,000 eyeballs at a cost of a penny per eyeball! Great stuff, right?

What are the limits of expressing thoughts in Twitter?

Here’s a powerful but inefficient (when run) thought that can be expressed on Twitter, a quick sort in Erlang in 126 characters.

qsort([]) -> [];
qsort([Pivot|T]) ->
   qsort([X || X <- T, X < Pivot])
   ++ [Pivot] ++
   qsort([X || X <- T, X >= Pivot]).

Also strcmp implemented in C can be tweeted:

int bstrcmp(char *s1,char *s2) { while(*s1 == *s2++) {if(*s1++ == 0){return 0;} } 
return (*(unsigned char *)s1 - *(unsigned char*)--s2);}

A lot of Perl one-liners can fit into a tweet – powerful and useful ones.

You can also propose the concept of a hash tag in a tweet:

However, there are many thoughts that seem to be difficult to fit into a tweet:

The Pythagorean Theorem and one of its many proofs
Anselm’s Ontological Proof for God’s Existence
Merge Sort in Ruby
Merge Sort in PHP
Why you should or shouldn’t outsource
What qualities make a great tech hire
The logical fallacy in another person’s tweet
How to subtly tell someone something in an indirect way with the only others knowing being those in the know

Twitter encourages the laconic expression of thought.

If you haven’t noticed yet, since you haven’t gone to the Explore page in *years*, Instagram has updated its Explore page algorithm. This page has featured only photos with the most likes. This led to poor quality photos by brands and celebrities always being on the Explore page. Thanks to some algorithmic curation, it seems that you get a curated Explore page that shows photos very similar to the ones you’ve liked in the past.

This has 2 impacts.

1) People will start clicking on the explore page again.
2) Users that otherwise would never get any attention, now do.

Great job Instagram!

I was the community manager for IGersSF for a year, which is part of a larger network of Instagramers started by Phil Gonzalez. The Instagramers Network, which is a name that Instagram doesn’t want them to have, is one of the few ways that mobile photographers traveling around the world can connect to users.

Full disclosure: I own Facebook stock and really want to see them do well, but as an owner of said stock, I’m surprised at how stingy Facebook is to both shareholders and its community.

While running IGersSF I had a great time organizing photo walks so that mobile photographers visiting San Francisco could see how friendly and welcoming the city was. During my tenure I organized and hosted 25 photo walks and 1 fund raiser. I even hosted an open bar. Since my resignation there’s been about 1 photo walk per month.

Given that there are at least 50 people in the employ of Instagram in Mountain View, I’m a bit shocked at the low level of community involvement. As a former developer of a mobile photo upload app, Via.Me, I know Instagram can run on auto-pilot with 3 people. What do these 50 people do all day besides make selections for the Weekend Hashtag Project?

If I had the resources of Instagram, I would be doing the following:

1. Host a photo walk every week in as many cities as I could
2. Provide a decent amount of food and drink after
3. Start an artist sponsorship program of around $1000 where users can apply for sponsorships to get their art projects funded.

I’ve tried to engage Instagram’s community managers on providing these things for the community, but they would never get back to me. I turned to brands to provide this sort of modicum of fun and libations for the community, but soon found out that Instagram wanted these brands for themselves.

Instagram simply isn’t into doing what’s best for the community because they really (and as a stockholder I know this) are focused on getting a return from partnerships with brands.

This would be okay, if Instagram wasn’t active in dissuading folks from creating communities. Brands are okay, but creating something like Instagramers SF is something in their eyes that must be destroyed. I always tried to get some sort of guidance from Instagram HQ, and they only gave me guidance and suggested using their new DM technology for a photo walk once. Also, have you noticed how all the companies with Instagram in them had to change their names? This is so creepy if you ask me.

I am left wondering why I’ve done so much for the community and those at Instagram HQ have done so little. Instagram, why are you so cheap?

Great puddle shots in the rain are tough to find.

There’s the famous one by Henri Cartier-Bresson.

But I really feel that the constant practice of photography engendered by the Internet’s social media has turned photography into a daily practice and that the 21st century has already done better than this classic on thousands of photos.

I’ve chosen two.

There’s this photo produced commercially as an ad for clothing rentals:

Also there’s this photo by Ted Chin:

So if you are newbie, and it is your 18th day, you probably have no followers and Instagram sucks.

So, it’s not looking good with my new Instagram account.

The followers I have are not engaged and seem to be bots fishing for likes and follows.

It feels like I’m being followed by spammers. At least there’s an app for fixing this. It’s called InstaFollow and it’s available in iPhone and Android versions.

I cessed out and followed the entire suggested users list.

I posted 2 photos that I haven’t published and was very conversational in how I interacted with folks on the suggested users’ list.

Only 2 people liked, commented and followed me back:

• @sebastiandantedesigns who has great landscapes and waterscapes, and
• @juririm who has a clever and quirky way of presenting the everyday.

I went through this exercise because of a well thought out piece written by Jason H. Reinhart. He likened the Instagram to being a place of inequity:

I see people out here with 20k who respond to literally every comment and interact with others daily. While I see some with 100+k and up not make any effort to thank anyone in their comments unless it’s to respond to a fellow instagramer who has 100+K themselves. Yet it’s those who are always on the Suggested list. Instagram has turned into what America has turned into, the rich getting richer and the poor struggle to stay afloat. I’m sad to see this…

What do you think?

This weekend, I learned about @syahrilaz (account deleted), an Instagrammer who stole photos from others that he posted as his own.

One of the photos that he purportedly stole is this one.

The guy supposedly was going to meet up with a bunch of real, big-time IGers. The guy’s supposedly from Egypt. This all reminds me of the play, Six Degrees of Separation. To say more would spoil it, but it is an awesome film with Will Smith and Stockard Channing.

Why do people steal photos that aren’t theirs?

By fits and starts I’ve been trying to write a novel ever since I read Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther. It’s a small book with an emo story of young love.

My first attempt involved a clever ending where the protagonist kills his antagonist right in front of the cops, but due to the nature of the murder, gets away with it scott free.

My second attempt involved a magical realism attempt to portray life in San Francisco during the 90s.

I am now on my 3rd attempt.

The problem I’ve run into is that the world is changing quickly. Also, my passion for an idea soon fades away. I lose the inspiration that made it possible to write in the first place.

It’s tough to write a novel because I need my emotions to fuel it. To keep these emotions (jealousy, love, hate, pity) going, I need to have little reminders of them. This is where notebooks and photos are really helpful. They spark and re-ignite the dead fire of what was supposed to be chapter 3. They also provide a lose structure.

I am hoping that this final attempt will produce “the novel.”