ipernity v Flickr - a comparison of traffic

Don't get me wrong, I love ipernity. It gives me the simple, uncluttered interface I so loved on the old Flickr, in contrast to the horrible 'in your face' mess that is Flickr now. However, I noticed that despite administering my ipernity account as I did with Flickr - commenting on others photographs, fostering the right contacts, joining appropriate groups, I cannot get anything like the traffic I did on Flickr.

To give you an example. A photograph I uploaded to ipernity in early June, has (as I write) had 56 views, 4 comments and 9 'faves'

Yesterday, as an experiment, I uploaded the same photo to Flickr (and again, as I write) it has received 2,227 views, 13 comments and 66 'faves' and is #102 on Explored! That's in one day! 
In nearly 3 months on ipernity, my most viewed photograph has had only 88 views, my most popular, 12 'likes' and the most commented photo has 15 comments.

So whilst I love ipernity's interface and community, It looks like Flickr is where I will get the most views (and we all like the praise, surely?), I don't know why this should be the case, unless of course, despite the large migration from Flickr after its unilateral interface redesign and membership changes debacle, its still has an overwhelming larger user base?

Said photograph.........
ipernity

View on Flickr

Goodbye Flickr! It's been a fantastic year, but with its new focus moving away from paying users toward ad-based revenue, it's time for me to take a break. To say I'm disappointed by last week's changes to the service would be an understatement. Despite tens of thousands of complaints on the Flickr feedback page dedicated to the changes, Flickr silence is deafening.

At least for now, I've moved my online presence to IPERNITY.  I may go back to Flickr if Yahoo decides to make some serious changes to their business model. But for the time being, I don't expect to be uploading anything more to my photostream.

I hope some of my contact on Flickr come over to join me on ipernity.

You can’t stand out if you’re trying to be like everyone else

"Last summer, the once-a-contender-but-fading-fast Yahoo! got itself Marissa Mayer to be its chief executive officer. (The imitation has gotten to where executives now must have the same first and last initials, it seems.) Marissa Mayer took office, issued an edict that all those Yahoo! people who were allowed to work at home must now work at the office or be fired, then said she would be going home now to have a baby. She had the baby, came back to work, and the baby is being raised in a nursery next to her office. I did not make any of that up.

Poor Marissa is doing the thing someone who isn't but desperately wants to be cool always does: imitate those who are the real thing. So she has decided to homogenize the various Yahoo! properties, and buy some more, and homogenize them, in a pitiful attempt to be like Facebook.

She spent $1.1 billion of other people's money to buy Tumblr, a cool-until-acquired-by-Yahoo! site made up in large part (though not entirely) of pornography copied from other sites. (It does have other stuff, and lots of it, but the porn is always nearby.) Without any warning to or consultation with its 80 million registered members (many of whom paid for the service), she converted Flickr, the Internet's premier photo display site, into a Facebook-ish, Tumblr-ish thing that resembles Windows 8 in both appearance and user backlash. People's carefully constructed sets and picture stories were all piled into one big lump, without their permission. Hello, Flick/Tumbl/r, one of the Internet's top-20 Facebook imitators.

And in case she had missed pissing off anyone, she announced at the big Flickr redesign rollout last week that "there's really no such thing as professional photographers anymore." No, just underage drinkers who want to post many fuzzy pieces of evidence that cell phones aren't very good cameras.

The nonexistent professional photographers fled en masse, many to a small but lovely site located in France called ipernity.com, whose staff of seven has been overwhelmed but has manged throughout to be calm, welcoming, friendly, and responsive, and they and their site are cool – in short, everything the new Yahoo! ain't. And the ipernity.com people will grow rich because they are who they are, not people trying to appear cool by trying to be something they're not.

That's the lesson, I think: imitation is an admission that you think you're behind, that you think whatever you are or have or produce isn't quite enough. And in the cases cited, the admission seems to be an accurate one.

You can't homogenize your way to success unless you're a dairy."

Old man, big kid note: Dennis E. Powell was an award-winning reporter in New York and elsewhere before moving to Ohio and becoming a full-time crackpot. His column appears on Mondays. You can reach him at dep@drippingwithirony.com

Margaret and I attended our second Tesco Wine Fair yesterday at Brunel's Old Station, Bristol. You can taste over 250 different wines from 14 different countries.

We tasted lots of wine, from the finest Champagne, sparkling wines and a whole host of red and white wines. We attended a workshop from the head of Tesco's Finest, where she explained the criteria they use to add wines to this range (with accompanying tastings!)

We enjoyed it thoroughly (again) and coupled with a nice meal at Bella Italia (courtesy of Tesco Rewards vouchers) we had an excellent afternoon and evening out.

It served to reinforce our choice of wine to quaff, one we discovered at last year's fair, from Tuscan producer Piccini, namely Memoro, a non-vintage wine blended from Italian grapes and regions from across the country.

The wine consists of 40% Primitivo (some of which is passito) from Puglia, 30% oak aged Montepulciano from Abruzzo, 20% Nero d'Avola from the island of Sicily and 10% Merlot from the Veneto in the north. Unusual on the nose too, it is a dead ringer for a Port with aromas of cherries and chocolate, woodsmoke and flowers, and a beguiling creaminess.

On the palate the unsual Port-like impression continues powerfully, with a slippery, silky texture, quite a lot of sweetness and abundant fruit. It is not fortified like Port, but the flavour and aromatic profile is so reminiscent. There is good acidity and a bit of tannin too, but this really needs some food to stand up to the onslaught of flavour and body -  £9.49, Tesco.

However, if you keep yours eyes open in-store or on-line, this great wine can be had for £4.90, which is all we've ever paid for it!

New camera

There have been several occasions recently when I wished I'd a better camera with me than my iPhone at those times where was impractical for me to carry my DSLR kit with me. This is particularly the case if I'm out on the mountain bike, but also if just out shopping in town.

I decided therefore to buy a compact digital camera, small enough to fit in my pocket, but without compromising on quality so it would supplement my DSLR photographs on Flickr.

After reading several reviews and seeing this particular model with a seriously reduced price in PC World, I opted for the Olympus SZ-11. Boasting 14 megapixels (only slightly less than my Nikon D3100 DSLR at 14.2) it also has an impressive 20x optical zoom which is the equivalent of a 25mm - 500mm telephoto on a 35mm camera!

Results to follow!

'Explored' on Flickr

Really pleased today! One of my photographs reached #19 on Flickr Explored! To put that into context, it was #19 out of the 1.5million photos uploaded every day! See more I more images on Flickr HERE

Here it is.............

Little Switzerland

View from Ridgeway, Newport, across Ynysyfro Reservoir towards Twmbarlwm. Taken on the ride back from Southerdown with the grandkids, just on the off-chance of a decent shot. The sun was shining through lots of 'pockets' between the clouds onto the fields.

Blog facelift

Finally managed to get this blog looking as close to my web site as possible. Clicking on the links above will take you to the web site (apart from the blog link of course!). Blogger is quite flexible as long as you are patient. Biggest problem was getting rid of those infernal shadow borders around images!

Built the new web site, because I can I suppose, but also as a means of showcasing my re-found hobby of photography. Recently bought a Nikon D3100 digital SLR after nearly 30 since owning an SLR. Great reviews for this entry level camera and I'm certainly pleased with it so far. Came with an 18mm - 55mm zoom lens.

Invested in a wireless remote shutter release (£11 eBay!) and a tripod (£7 eBay!)

This is one of my first photographs. Could certainly do with a longer zoom lens though!