::HorsePigCow:: life uncommon: The Flavors of (photo) Search Tara Hunt has an interesting post where she talks about Riya’s future and how best to implement various search features into their photo sharing site.
Along the way she analyzes and complies personality profiles on the types of people that use photo sharing sites and the social networking tools that they provide. Each personality type seems to be motivated by different things, but all are strongly drawn to the concept of sharing, photos, each other, etc.
I found myself certainly identifying with these concepts of photo sharing personality types through my own interaction with flickr. Her 10 online photo sharing personality types include: the Explorer, The Aficionado, The Social Butterfly, The Researcher, The Cultural Anthropologist, The Personal, The Designer, The Newshound, The Lurker, and The Perv.
I think I’d classify myself as an Aficionado:
“Aficionados have a seriously amazing eye for a good photograph. An Aficionado usually takes amazing photographs him/herself and appreciates (sometimes with envy – “Doh! Why didn’t I catch that shot?!”) others amazing photographs. Aficionados travel in circles together. This type is serious and usually carries a serious camera with serious lenses. Aficionados pay a great deal of attention to their art form and will spend many hours ‘exploring’. Just like The Explorer, they love to uncover gems, but they are much more likely to interact with the photographer they admire.”
I suppose in building any sucessful online photosharing site it’s important to look at who is using your product and why and what Tara’s post points out is that many people use photosharing sites in many different ways for many different reasons.
Of course I had you in the back of my mind when I was writing up that description….shhhh don’t tell. 😉