Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2009/12/06

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Subject: [Leica] Are you on Twitter? Should you be?
From: michiel.fokkema at wanadoo.nl (Michiel Fokkema)
Date: Sun, 06 Dec 2009 11:11:10 +0100
References: <9F07836ED74F1C42AA69DFBAF8A1E2F1374A2D82D5@MBX1.asc.local>

Cheers,

Michiel Fokkema

I'm on twitter too. Posted a bit. But still wonder why people want to 
know what I'm doing or need to know what I'm doing. I'm also not always 
interested in when people pick their nose or brush their teeth.
But I do recognise thatit can be a powerful marketing together with 
Facebook.

Cheers,

Michiel Fokkema

Kyle Cassidy wrote:
> 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
>
> _______________________________________________
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>   



Replies: Reply from photo at frozenlight.eu (Nathan Wajsman) ([Leica] Are you on Twitter? Should you be?)
In reply to: Message from kcassidy at asc.upenn.edu (Kyle Cassidy) ([Leica] Are you on Twitter? Should you be?)