They came up with some interesting findings.
- 20% of users account for 82% of all photos
- Pro users make up just 3.7% of users, but account for over 59% of all photos
- 39% of users are inactive
- 23% of users have no public photos, but have used the site to communicate
- 64% of contacts are reciprocated
- To become famous on Flickr you can't just be a good photographer, you need to contribute. One of the star photographers made over 51,000 comments in an 18 month period
What the research shows is the amazing power of a very small group of users to shape the community. This group puts enormous efforts into tagging, commenting and discussion that turns Flickr from a photo storage site into a vibrant community.
Flickr appears to have managed this group really well giving them enough freedom and listening when needed.
The paper also notes Rebekka Guoleifsdottir from Iceland, the Flickr star, who has risen from obscurity to internet and real world fame.
As the Guardian pointed out in 2006.
"Three o'clock one Icelandic morning, Rebekka Guoleifsdottir couldn't sleep. There was a picture in her mind's eye, and only one way to realise it. So she picked up her camera, drove out of her home town and stood in a lake for an hour, water lapping at her knees. She took picture after picture after picture until she got the right shot.
It did not appear on an advertising billboard, gallery or magazine but on the internet, along with hundreds of other photos she has posted to huge acclaim, catching the eye of the Wall Street Journal and Germany's Der Spiegel magazine. In the latest demonstration of the internet's power to launch careers, Rebekka has now landed a lucrative deal with the car maker Toyota and is set to make a fortune by selling her work online.
Yet just over a year ago the single mother was still teaching herself how to use a camera, a Canon Digital Ixus, without reading the manual. She had already put some of her drawings on Flickr, a community website where users post their pictures for others to view, and decided to add some of her early photos. The instant response was encouraging so, despite having no training as a photographer, she upgraded her camera and kept expanding her page. To date it has received 1.6m visits, making it the most popular of all Flickr's 4m users.
'The web changes opportunities for all kinds of artists, like musicians,' said Guoleifsdottir, 28, speaking from her home in Hafnarfjorour, near Reykjavik. 'It's so much easier to get your stuff out there. Iceland is a small community of 300,000 people and it's hard to get recognised, but this way you can reach out everywhere."
Posted by Ed Cotton
"My office has a bank of 16 monitors and I sit in here, surf the Internet and drink 10 gallons of coffee a day. No, not really. Actually I have one computer, although I do spend a fair amount of time in the Internet, although not my entire day. I'd say I spend about 30% of my day there, which would include management of the Toyota blog and monitoring other blogs. My role is to integrate the use of consumer generated media into other areas of our corporate communications. For example, we work with marketing, using the information I might get to expand our audience, even for traditional pr events. We are broadening these to include influential bloggers and other media groups. We move in a lot of directions."
Via Brandweek
Posted by Ed Cotton
Sitting across the highway from these efforts, are brands like Threadless, who’ve capitalized on the artistry of creative individuals, allowing them to design product and make some money.
At the fringes there are signs of a new revolution brewing, one that turns the notion of producer and consumer on its head. The idea that the consumers develop, create and control the destiny of the brands they create.
The best example of this is Myfootballclub.co.uk, where 50,000 soccer fans have signed up and paid a fee of $70. This has given the group access to considerable funds, in fact they have enough money to purchase as soccer club and are currently in negotiations to do just that.
Is there a possible future where thousands of consumers get together to form buying clubs and create products and services with no direct involvement from corporations?
Posted by Ed Cotton