http://jpgmag.com

ok, i haven’t written any posts in a LONG time but i figure i better get one in during december, before the new year is upon us. the reason for this absence is that for the past couple of months i have been totally addicted to jpgmag.com - and because of this, jpgmag.com gets my favorite time suck and social network of the year for 2009. woot woot!

in case you don’t know about it, jpgmag.com is a photo sharing social network site. the thing that makes it different from flickr or any other photo site is that the most popular and well accepted photos by vote make it to an actual printed magazine. in some old school analog way, that is way cool! the other difference is that jpgmag.com doesn’t want all your photos; they just want your best photos. of course flickr has some great photos and jpgmag also has some crappy ones, but when you’re asked to upload your best, it really makes one (and in this particular case, photographers) really think about what they will show the public. after all, we all want to get our best work published.

Sister mine. by edd carlile

so to make a long story short, i have spent hundreds of hours looking at and uploading photos -  and the truth is that i have spent most of that time looking at great work from some awesome professional and amateur photographers. i have probably viewed thousands of photos -  from amazing portraits by edd carlile to stunning abstracts by ina k to amazing landscapes by marc krutiak. but i could go on and on… anyway, you can find me here so sign up and vote for my photos (wink). i even got chris sofe to start posting there again. now to get dave schiliro to put up his abstracts.

share this...and this...and this

i love social networking. believe me, i really do. i believe that social networks and social media marketing play a very important role in today’s completely wired (and/or wireless) world. but looking at the image above - which i must admit i don’t remember what website i took the screen shot from - it seems that we’re getting to the point of ridiculousness. when i came across this, i seriously could not believe the amount of icons on that page.

i understand that a couple of them may be foreign (ie, not USA) sites (segnalo.com - yes, netvouz.com - no), but my question is where do we draw the line? i’m all for free market economies and building a better mousetrap (or social network in this case), but over 6 social bookmarking sites on the same links page? do we really need backflip, link-a-gogo, spurl and yardbarker? c’mon, yardbarker?

am i the only one who feels like this? oh yeah, and don’t forget to post, re-post, share and link to this article…