[Leica] Are you on Twitter? Should you be?

[zoeica at mac.com (Chris Williams)]

RT



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kyle Cassidy" Subject: [Leica] Are you on Twitter? Should you be?


> Over the years I have been known to bark, at random times, "What do you 
> think Bob Denver is doing RIGHT NOW?" -- and not because I had some 
> personal curiosity about the star of Gilligans Island and Dobie Gillis but 
> because it was a synecdoche for something I _was_ curious about -- what do 
> famous people DO when they're not being famous?
>
> Fast forward 20 or 30 years and now we have Twitter.
>
> For those of you who don't know, twitter.com is a service that 
> rebroadcasts text messages to subscribers. Nothing more than that really. 
> You pull out your cell phone, type "I'm standing in line at the DMV" and 
> send it to anybody who cares to listen. And who cares to listen? It could 
> be your family, old college buddies, your Mahjong club.... Or, if you 
> happen to have achieved some level of notoriety ... thousands, hundreds of 
> thousands, or even millions of people.
>
> And what does this mean for photographers?
>
> I've wondered this myself for a long time and resisted twitter -- after 
> all, you're limited to 140 characters, it seems to be the sort of thing 
> that destroys our conversational skills, promotes ADHD, and removes 
> meaning from our lives. And ... it can be. But it doesn't have to. While 
> photographing a celebrity who shall remain nameless, I watched him twitter 
> several times, remarked that I found it useless "I write in the long 
> form," I said (albeit not exactly that pretentiously). "You still can," he 
> replied, "I do as well, I just send out a note to twitter saying "I have a 
> new blog post up. And people go and read it."
>
> And I realized then that twitter has a use for photographers. A good one.
>
> People who are following you on twitter are people who are _predisposed to 
> like the things that you do_. Which means if you have a gallery show, a 
> fine art print go on sale, an image in a magazine, or even a new image 
> posted to your web page, the people who follow you are much more likely to 
> buy it, see it, or talk about it than any selection of people walking past 
> a Barns and Nobel window on any street. The life of an artist is one about 
> building community and as such, I've found twitter to be useful.
>
> In the grand scheme of things, Twitter is a Good Thing in two ways: one, 
> if you have a lot of people following your "tweets" it's useful for nearly 
> everything, from finding a developing tank and Dektol at 1 a.m. in Burnt 
> Church Michigan, to getting people out to your gallery show, but also it's 
> good for keeping like minded groups of people in contact -- like this 
> mailing list but from moment to moment. The use of keywords (called "hash 
> tags") allows people to search for posts they're interested in. You could, 
> for example, post a photograph and add the hash tag #leica, allowing 
> people who are interested in Leica to find you. (Checking twitter right 
> now for people using the hash tag #leica, I find this interesting message: 
> "ianjindal Celebspotting: stood in front of Rowan Atkinson in RG Lewis, 
> #leica shop today. He didn't recognise me." -- we find out that Rowan 
> Atkinson is shopping for Leica's. Oh the magic of the Internet.)
>
> I know LUGger Chris Williams (who can be found on twiiter here: 
> http://twitter.com/zoeica) posts photos from his shoots. But who else?
>
> If you're talking about Leicas on twitter, you can find me here: 
> http://twitter.com/kylecassidy
>
> & I'd love to hear why people like, dislike, or are ambivalent to this, or 
> how people are using other parts of the Internet to move their photography 
> forward.
>
> Kyle
>
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information