A Picture's Worth a Thousand Lawsuits

It's been a couple months since I've covered a good blogger controversy, but the story that caught my eye today combines my passion of blogging with my love of photography.

What happened is that a popular photo blogger snapped a few photos while visiting the World Erotic Art Museum and posted them to Flickr. The museum was none too pleased by that, and subsequently threatened the blogger with a $2 million lawsuit.

At first glance, this seems like an extreme overreaction by the museum, but let's dive further into this case courtroom-style.

The prosecution (museum):

• The museum's curator stated that although photographers are allowed to take pictures, there's an unwritten agreement that the photos won't be posted online. The goal there is to protect children from seeing anything explicit.

• The blogger in question has had a history of causing trouble with museums and has a reputation for being confrontational, so a firm statement had to be made.

• The blogger was never given permission to take photographs.

• The museum is not necessarily looking to profit here, but is demanding a public apology from the blogger and compensation for legal fees.

The defense (blogger):

• The blogger states that the museum's complaint is that he violated their policy prohibiting professional photography, and he has not tried to profit from the photos. Furthermore, Flickr is defined as a non-commercial website. Therefore, the blogger didn't violate the policy.

• Unwritten/unspoken agreements like the one the museum mentions have little, if any, ground for a lawsuit. 

• While the museum claims the blogger wasn't given permission to take photos, the blogger claims he was in fact approached by a museum employee and given the go-ahead after being questioned briefly.

This is obviously an extremely messy situation. Both sides are claiming the other one is lying, and because nothing was signed or documented we probably won't know the whole story.

Personally, while I understand the museum is trying to position itself as a protecter of impressionable children, this types of blogger controversies rarely work out well for the party filing the lawsuit. That being said, the museum is most likely doing more harm to themselves than good.

Questionable Moves by Google Worth a Second Look

Usually when I talk about recent developments from Google, it's in reference to some big announcement or new feature and why it is/isn't a good idea. But today, I'd like to switch things up a bit and talk about a couple non-product issues that have come up over the past 24 hours that I found interesting.

The first was a story from TechCrunch about MySpace getting ripped on the discussion forum Quora when a user asked whether or not MySpace will be able to recover. Not so bad, right? But what was surprising was that one of the answers came from Google's VP of Corporate Development, who responded with a very sarcastic "Is this a real question?"

The reason this caught my attention is that Google is a major advertising partner with MySpace, so I'm surprised that Google would publicly criticize them. But is this a sign of an upcoming split, or Google simply being realistic?

The second move by Google yesterday was the announcement that new Flickr users will now be able to use their Google account to sign in, rather than using/creating a Yahoo account. My main criticism of this move is the fact that existing Flickr users still have to use their Yahoo account (which I only use to get into Flickr, usually after 3 or 4 failed attempts because I can never remember my Yahoo login info!)

My personal criticisms aside, there is one other huge reason people are questioning this move; Google owns Picasa, a direct competitor with Flickr. At first I agreed with these critics, but let's face it: Flickr is the gold standard of photo-sharing and Picasa is a distant second. So in many ways this a win-win, because Google will keep people from creating new Yahoo accounts to use Flickr while Yahoo will get more people to use Flickr instead of Picasa.

Both of these moves by Google show that even the little moves a company makes can have a major ripple effect.

Facebook Friday: Will Photo Upgrade Be A Flickr Kicker?

Just a day or so after I wrote about the online arms race between Facebook and Google, Facebook announced more upgrades, this time to their photo-sharing feature. But before I get to the affect this will have, here's the low-down on this high-res photo upgrade:

• The biggest difference will be a larger photo size, increasing it from the current 720 pixels to 2048 pixels (184% increase)
• This larger display size means support for high-resolution photos, which is good considering how prevalent high-res cameras are nowadays.
• Facebook will use a lightbox display for photos, meaning you won't have to jump from page to page to view each photo.
• As expected, internal upgrades should allow for faster upload times.

So that's the technical side of the upgrade, but what about its impact?

Clearly, this puts Facebook in direct competition with Flickr. Until now, Flickr carved out a niche for itself as a photo enthusiasts/professionals' network with high-res capabilities, while Facebook was the place to share snapshots and family photos.

It's same dynamic we see between YouTube and Vimeo, where YouTube (like Facebook) is the much more popular site with lower quality videos and Vimeo (like Flickr) is less trafficked but specializes in higher quality videos.

And even when YouTube started supporting HD videos, we didn't see Vimeo fall off the map. That's because the professionals who had helped position Vimeo as design-oriented saw no need to switch websites because Vimeo is as much about the site's demographic as its HD capabilities.

This is why Flickr shouldn't be too concerned with Facebook's upgrades. Photography enthusiasts and professionals will continue to use Flickr because that's the niche it's carved out, and it goes beyond the high-resolution features. That's why these upgrades are nice, but not enough to muscle out Flickr.

Remember, no amount of organic products can turn a Wal-Mart into a Whole Foods.

The Queen of Anti-Social Media

Last week Axiom took big strides to expand its online presence, including an Axiom Flickr account. Apparently we're not the only ones who want to expand, with the British Family creating a Flickr account of their own.

Now to be honest, the Flickr account itself isn't anything special, with picture sets for different Royal Family members and events. However, what is special (and not in a good way) is that comments are disabled on the account.

Actually that isn't too surprising, considering comments are also disabled on the British Monarchy's YouTube account. Also, their @BritishMonarchy Twitter account isn't used conversationally, only being used to publish stories and news links.

I applaud the effort by the Royal Family to branch out into more social media channels, but they are completely missing the point. Social media success or failure depends on the level of engagement you can generate, and eliminating the ability for others to comment eliminates the potential for that engagement.

I understand that the British Monarchy is probably worried about negative feedback or mean comments. But silencing everybody is not the answer, and will most likely only create the negative backlash that they were trying to avoid in the first place.

It's hard to categorize most social media decisions as "right" or "wrong." However, this kind of one-way social media contradicts the transparency and interaction that social media is all about.

13 Places To Get Online Inauguration Coverage

Barack Obama's Inauguration Ceremony takes place on Tuesday. Although tickets sold out fast, you can still get very good coverage if you know where to look on the Internet.

1. Major Television Networks Online - All the major TV networks are broadcasting a web stream of the events. Check out ABC.com, CBS.com, MSNBC.com, FOXNews.com, and CNN.com for each network's coverage.

2. Major Newspaper's Online Video - Many of the major print newspapers are also broadcasting video feeds of the event. USAToday.com, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

3. Hulu - Hulu will be live streaming the inauguration and the stream is embeddable. More content on Obama, past speeches, and commentary can be found on the Obama Presidency page.

4. Current TV and Twitter - Current TV and Twitter are partnering on inauguration day to add real-time Tweets to the live TV broadcast of the event. Using the hashtag "#current," many of the Tweets will be added into the TV broadcast. You can follow the inauguration on Twitter by viewing the live feed streams for #inauguration, #inaug09, and #dctrip09 (for those road tripping to DC).

5. Facebook Updates with CNN - CNN and Facebook have partnered for the Inauguration. Not only will the swearing in be live streamed, but users can RSVP to the event and then provide status updates during the event. A window will show all your friend's updates on the event.

6. Text Messages From Obama Team - Text "History" to 56333 to receive periodic updates from the Obama team about inauguration happenings and events. Click here for more info.

7. Livestation - Wonder what the rest of the world outside of the US will be thinking? At Livestation.com, you can switch inauguration coverage between a variety of international perspectives including Al Jazeera English, the BBC World News, C-SPAN, euronews, and France 24.

8. Flickr Stream From Presidential Inaugural Committee - Head on over to Flickr to see tons of photos of the inaugural happening from DC. Good pictures of the stage construction process and more.

9. YouTube - The Presidential Inaugural Committee has set up an official Inauguration Page on YouTube. If you join the group, you can post your own videos from the events.

10. Joint Congressional Committee - The Joint Congressional Committee will be live streaming the entire event. There is also a wealth of information on their site about what happens on inauguration day, the history of past inaugurations, and video from historic inaugurations of the past.

11. Joost - Joost will be live streaming CBS' feed on the Everything Obama page.

12. Terra - Hispanic-focused Terra will show both English and Spanish streams of the event.

13. Live Earth - Live Earth created a video channel for the inauguration where users can submit short videos giving Obama ideas about how he can use green technologies to change the country and help our environment. Some of the videos will be shown in DC the day before the inauguration.

UPDATE:
(Bonus)
14. Obama Inaugural Twitter - The Official Obama Inaugural Committee Twitter has got tons of info that will help keep you up to the second.

Flickr With a Timeline

While Flickr and Facebook allow you to upload your photos, LifeSnapz allows you to upload photos/videos in a chronological format. This is a great idea, since many people on Facebook have upwards of 500 pictures tagged to just themselves. Below is a sample pic from TechCrunch.