3 ms·

I'm curious to see a comparison of photo sharing sites, their intended audiences, and relative strengths and weaknesses, from the people who actually use them.

• adventured 9y ago
  Elite creators usually don't like to hang out creatively where the general masses do. It's true in art broadly, it's true in music, it's true in photography. New scenes - think grunge or punk rock - don't usually happen where the old scene is. There's a certain element of snobbery ('this is our thing') and cultural rebellion inherent in that, and I don't mean that in a harsh way, it's just the way it has tended to be historically. Separation from the mundane status quo. If you're one of the 100 greatest living photographers, the odds are you're not overly interested in hanging out where average Joe is posting and sharing 927 pictures of the family vacation to Disneyland. People like communities filled with people at least somewhat like themselves. Even the cool factor inevitably plays into it (mass market sites inherently lose that), no matter how much a person may resist that lure. Once upon a time, Yelp and Flickr were small, tight-knit, snobbish communities that the masses had never heard of. If a site goes fully mainstream, it'll start to bleed off its elite creators (assuming there are alternatives). They'll seek out a new scene, they'll try to get away from the mundane that inevitably sets in, and the dilution of the qualities of the community that initially attracted them.