It’s been an interesting week or so in photography and social media – from a certain Internet-based company CEO’s assault on professional photographers, to facebook’s announcement (finally) of verified accounts.  A couple of interesting nuggets happened here at Frameable Faces as well, so while I’m not sure if this is something I’ll do weekly or monthly (or ever again haha), I thought a little column about various current events as they relate to our business, the photography industry, and social media might be a good idea.

Not feeling so “yahoo” about Yahoo.

We haven’t used Tumblr or Flickr before so while Yahoo acquiring Tumblr and making changes to Flickr didn’t affect us, the comments Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer made during the announcement that “there’s no such thing, really, as professional photographers…” caught our attention a little.  I watched the news conference and while I don’t like the stuffy overly “professional” suit and tie approach in corporate America, I also think your CEO should sound slightly more articulate than this person.  I was not impressed.  Scott Bourne has shredded her and she is treating him like some random troll to be ignored.  Scott Bourne is a very influential professional photographer (maybe that’s why she hasn’t heard of him) and I believe her comments and her subsequent non-apology will come back to bite her.

Facebookus Promotionus Interruptus

We pride ourselves on being pretty savvy when it comes to social media – we try to do it the right way and follow the written rules and (more importantly) the unwritten rules, but we still make mistakes and we are still learning.  Heck, there is something new to learn every day if not every hour.  For example we got tripped up last week in some changes to facebook terms that we were unaware of.

I must say I find this “no more than 20% text” policy a little arbitrary and bizarre.  We spent 5 dollars to promote a fundraiser for Relay For Life West Bloomfield.  We created it as an “event” on facebook, and there is an option to add an event cover photo.  The dimensions for this cover photo are 714×264 while the standard timeline photo is 851×315.  Not sure why the slight difference here other than to encourage users to create unique content for your event different from your timeline photo?  Fine – makes sense I guess.  Logically I figured I’d keep it simple and include the three logos of the participating entities with a simple phrase “Let’s Help Defeat Cancer!”.  When we created the graphic we didn’t think it represented a call to action with phone numbers, websites etc. which we thought must have been the issue when we received the email.  However it turns out that facebook “quietly” updated their terms on March 6th to allow for calls to action so that wouldn’t have been a problem.  The problem is this new 20% text policy, which I’m fine with when it comes to a timeline cover for your brand, but isn’t an event by nature a call to action which requires a little bit of text to announce the event?  They let me keep the cover photo up, they just wouldn’t let me promote the event.  I didn’t think my promoted post was going to include the cover photo in it anyway so I’m still a little confused.  Weird…  No biggie – I suppose this year (our first year at the Relay For Life) we can take some photos and next year include those as a collage for the cover photo for any fundraiser events we are doing.  That will look better anyway than this quickie we put together this year…  While I’m at it, here is the link to our team page if you want to donate to help us fight cancer.

Our event cover photo which violated the new 20% text rule....

Yes This Is The Real Doug Cohen

I must admit that there have been times when I’ve had to do a double take on fake facebook profiles of famous people – wondering if it’s really them.  Some of the fakes are obvious and some can fool you even if it’s just for a second.  With twitter you always knew because of the little “verified” check next to the profile.  This is finally coming to facebook and facebook will determine who gets the verified label.  First will be celebrities and public figures but eventually it will come to highly followed people and pages.  I’m wondering since the limit for personal friends is 5000 for everybody what the threshold will be for personal verification.  Pick me!!! Pick me!!!  I wanna BE somebody!!!  😉

Other quick hits…

• Really want Vine to be released for Droid!  Hurry up Vine developers!!!  Thinking this could be a cool platform for Frameable Faces and this seems to be taking forever…
• I’m becoming more active on Yelp (yes this is a link directly to my profile) as a way to connect with people – spend some time there – you’ll see what I mean.
• Had a really nice genuine interaction on twitter (I know right?) with a charming Australian tweeter I met named Susan Israel.  Reflecto was a little snarky to her of course (remember he tweets) but she took it in stride.  You should follow her at @bondi_izzy.