Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Is it just me? It seems that there is less traffic on photo blogs and forums.


 Email: brqyvn@gmail.com

Hi Pentaxian friends.

Is it just me or is it a factual new trend? I follow about one hundred blogs and forums related to Digital Photography. In the past six months or so, I noticed a decline in visitors and interactive comments. I'm not talking about my blog, I'm talking about all blogs in general. Even the most popular sites have less comments, or threads (in the case of forums).

Are people more engaged in social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter? I belong to both, and once in a while, I do find interesting sites on Twitter. As for Facebook, it has become more of a soap box central than anything else, and beside, I don't really care what people have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

My favorite site for photography is Photo.net, and of course their Pentax Forum section. They have something for everyone and for every make of cameras. Then again, the Photo.net Pentax forum is not as active as it once was. Certainly, not everyone has learned everything there is to know about photography, did they? If they have, I missed the boat as I still have a lot to learn.

Maybe the traffic has moved to another media, and if it has, can someone tell me where? I just got a new cell phone, and I opted to get the new iPhone 4 from Verizon. I was nearing the end of my two year contract and was able to get the iPhone at a very reasonable price. I already had unlimited minutes and Internet, so it's a good deal. I have been downloading Apps by the dozens and there are indeed quite a bit of information about photography. Is that what people are  using now?Are we getting even more isolated?

 I love the iPad 2 and will be getting one as soon as I save enough money to purchase one. I will get the Wi-Fi version as my Verizon iPhone also serves as a WI-Fi Personal Hotspot  for up to five additional devices. Of course, at home I will use Wi-Fi already installed on my network.


So the question remains, Is it just me or is there a new trend of communication?

Thanks for reading,

Yvon Bourque

9 comments:

Ken said...

I think the novelty of making a comment is wearing off, plus quite often the comments that are already there are pointless so if I'm not reading the comments I'm unlikely to comment. Plus for some blogs the screening of comments means anything that disagrees with the post is out. And most of us don't have a lot of time.

Benedikt Meier said...

I've watched the same thing. I think, most people loose their time im facebook, the rest of the internet users do not want to leave their tracks in teh internet. So they don't write any comments. This will continue for a while and I hope that this will go to another direction in a couple of years. So go on blogging ;-)

Anonymous said...

Maybe people are going back to actually shooting instead of only discussing about it. I think at some point there is not much left to really discuss/talk about.

I mean, who gives a rat's ass whether the display of the new D5100 swivels to the left or down. It just swivels the way it does, so why even bother.

Cameras are tools of a wonderful trade - so use them.

I am glad if there was less chatter about things - it would make it easier to make out the good ones.

Alain Dumas said...

Hi Yvon, I did notice something similar but in the field. I see less people taking pictures than two years ago. In my case I don't know if it is weather related, long cold winter doesn't help, but in general it seems that the wave is slowing down. Even at the Montreal Botanical Garden Butterfly exhibit, this year less photographers showed up. I also subscribe to various feeds and I also find that less is shown. I'm guessing that that the false economic recovery is showing it's toll.

Lars Eric Fjellman,Sweden said...

Hey!
With photo web sites becoming more and more alike and the photos more and more alike I think people get tired of copying each others pictures. Without finding your own style the image copying after some time becomes meaningless. In the long run you can´t look at photos and say "This was a good photo - I must do somethihg similar, then I´ll be a grat photographer". All artists have to find their own individual expression.
Lars Eric

Brian said...

Hi, I think it may be multiple reasons.
1. Many people have less time and money for hobbies.
2. Photo forums tend to be so caustic that I don't go to them anymore. A lot of mean people are out there.
3. Blogs so often are just about equipment and that is getting boring as the digital cameras are all so good now.
4. The usual sites are too full of adds and excessively commercial, like the magazines for my taste. I want a relaxing visit.
5. Podcasts are great. I listen to them on my commute. I find more of them focused on the art and technique. Film Photography Podcast is fantastic. (and yes I do own a Pentax Dslr, Olympus Dslr, and a sigma dp2s). So I have got too much of the GAS. But I really just want too shoot. I think people are trending that way.

Unknown said...

to me there is just too much and too little time. one begins to wonder what the point to all this blogging is anymore.

Sure there are useful sites with good information but then there are hundreds and thousands of sites about nothing but random events and people's lives that everyone seems to want to document.

Have a pizza....take a picture...put on flickr

walk your dog...make a video and upload to youtube

I also have about fifty blogs that I follow and some have stopped updating for a long while now. Maybe people are getting on with life.

Unknown said...

With services like Instapaper and Google Reader, content is being uprooted away from the content provider and into specialized content consumption tools. Here's one take on the trend from A List Apart:

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/orbital-content/

These tools do not make it easy to comment back to the source, so I would imagine that might contribute to the trend of decreased commenting. So even if you don't hear from your readers, it doesn't mean you don't have any. Keep blogging, Yvon!

patrick dinneen said...

I'm guessing that there's a lot more photoblogs popping up so comments are spread out over more blogs.
Also with Flickr and other photo sharing sites people may be active there more than on blogs.
On my old blog the latest photo used to be on the homepage. I've changed my blog and now have a dedicated (photo)blog section and found that I get less comments. Maybe that's laziness on people's part...