I love technology, I really do. Sometimes it gets me super excited.
On July 16, 2012, Marissa Mayer was appointed CEO of Yahoo! Later that day, a website popped up.
http://www.dearmarissamayer.com/
Soon thereafter, a Twitter trend followed.
#dearmarissamayer
Within one day, Yahoo! responded.
http://www.flickr.com/dearinternet/
When I saw this, I remember thinking three distinct thoughts.
1.) Why did Flickr fade?
Flickr at some point was, in fact, an awesome website. While it started as a photo sharing site, and even developed conversations through comment streams, it became significantly more powerful as it matured. Over time, the site likely began to pave the way for this stuff we now call “social media.” Basically, users were not just uploading photos, they were uploading photos with metadata. All sorts of information including location, camera model, aperture and shutter speed readings, among other things.
- Flickr users were uploading millions of photos and metadata and anyone could track consumer trends. Users could now see what the most popular camera was, but more importantly, users could see the potential of a camera they may have been shopping for. All of a sudden, we were getting product reviews.
- Flickr users were also uploading millions of photos and metadata and anyone could see what was going on in a specific location, in real-time. In retrospect, this was not quite real-time as we see today with Twitter, but certainly faster than standard media. Natural disasters, political unrest, and other major news were being documented visually.
I remember this being a big deal to me, in recognizing the sort of data that was “out there.”
2.) Twitter breaks down barriers.
At this point, I think we all know this, but it is still incredibly important. No matter how often this sort of thing happens, I’ll always be impressed. There have never been suggestion boxes for laypersons to submit ideas to major companies. With Twitter, now we can suggest (or complain). In the early days of Twitter (say 2007), it was a one-way street. I complained, my three friends on Twitter didn’t respond, I ate dinner and went to bed.
Twitter has changed become more popular since 2007. This #dearinternet moment was one of the moments that opened up my eyes. Someone is listening. Not in that ‘creepy big-brother’ sort of way, but more in that ‘we’re all in this together’ sort of way.
3.) I love technology.
Nice post! Twitter is definitely one of my favorite tools for catching up on the news and following current events in 140 characters or less. It’s fast, it’s easy, it’s awesome. Your big brother comment made me think of a disconcerting article I read yesterday. According to a transparency report recently published by Twitter, governments have been increasingly requesting users’ identity data. The scariest part of the article is that 80% of the requests have been coming not from countries with repressive regimes like China or Iran, but from the US government. It will be interesting to see how privacy concerns affect users behavior in the future, if at all.
Link to article here: http://rt.com/news/twitter-privacy-governments-957/
80% is a huge percentage, but there may be more to the story.
With at least 50 million active users, 1009 total subpoenas is an amazingly small percentage.
I would hope that something like this wouldn’t change how people behave on social media. As Twitter gets more popular, it would make sense that the number of government subpoenas would increase as well. As long as the number stays small, this is probably ok.
Interesting post! I started pondering the “Why did flickr fail” question. I guess my answer is two-fold. When smartphones began to become people’s primary camera, they didn’t want a site that “just” enabled photosharing. Photosharing is a feature, not a product. I guess that begs the question about why Instagram was successful, and my answer here is the other reasons Flickr failed, people share mobile pictures in different ways and for different reasons than “traditional” digital photos (how’s that for a phrase with all sorts of interesting nuances). The good news, is that Flickr is capitalizing on Facebook’s purchase of Instagram to become relevant again. We’ll see what happens!
No question. Flickr simply missed out on the trend. A major reason they started to get lost in the fold is because they never put out a beautiful iOS app for people to upload, and then connect directly to Twitter or Facebook (seems so simple). Part of me feels like they silo’d themselves in order to keep Yahoo! a standalone competitor. Perhaps it’s just another lesson. Focus on what you’re good at, and work with companies that are good at something else. Same idea, but in a different context – we’re all in this together.