The power of the image has never been more "valuable" than it is today. In a world where all news and information is being pumped out to IPhones, Ipads, E Readers, Mobile, Apps, Twitter, Facebook, etc. the prime lead to any major news story these days is the image that draws the reader in the first place.
If you look at sites like The Daily Beast, Huffpo, Newser, etc. it's the image that tells the story, evokes emotions and takes the reader to click on the link to take them to the story. Whether that's Obama blowing the tax reform bill, Lady Gaga wearing some ridiculous outfit or Derek Jeter signing his contract, the fact of the matter is it's the image that drives the story. Society's attention span has been so shortned that we've narrow casted our interests to either a photo or some outrageous headline that begs us to click on it and enter.
Why it's different in today's media consumption world is that while the public still gravitates to 24/7 news cable channel coverage, award shows ( sort of) and programs that entertain them we are seeing the slow emergence of web TV finally breaking ground and executives hoping a product like Google TV can gain traction ( I've tried it and still think it's a clumsy device and has a long way to go to get me interested). The streaming of images to facebook, flickr, photobucket, snap fish will only becoming more and more accessible and part of our daily conscious stream.
Zuckerberg in the 60 Minutes interview last Sunday addressed how important and relevant photos has become to the Fbook experience. Who would have thought that being tagged in a photo was a good thing until now. As Fbook becomes even that much stronger in the search space, they will be formidable competition against the likes of a static Google.
So the question in 2011 will be who will monetize link photography first? Google is trying with Pixazza and there are others trying to engage the space so it'll be interesting to see how far they push the boundaries. Their foray into the fashion space is an interesting one but one that makes perfect sense. The marriage of the photo and the product has never been that much more critical than it is now.
The unfortunate part about all of this is that the content producers ( aka Photo Agencies) are being left at the altar by VC's and PE's who garnish their Harvard MBA's like it's out of style. But , they get it and many agencies don't. Sure, as a content producer you can join the movement and get a percentage of a percentage. But, I'm more interested in getting most of the percentage and driving traffic with Elevation's images ( and others) instead. What photo agency folks aren't are coders, people who write programs, API experts, CPC experts, etc. Not yet at least :)
In the meantime, this link photography economy that is taking the cloud by storm will eventually mature to a market that will be open to all producers of photos and content. It will only be a matter of time that the Google's of the world will fix this issue and make a platform that will pay out what it does to those that are sucessful who advertise on Google.
