Social Media Trends: Picture Sharing

In 2009, according to  the globalwebindex.com, the most popular social media trend all over the world was uploading photos online.  With the upcoming social media trends of more professional networks, employer policies regulating social media use and social media in general becoming less popular as such, photo sharing seems to have died out a bit, the social media equivalent of a one-hit wonder.  The trend is that social media sites will have photo sharing capabilities, but won't be solely dedicated to photo-sharing anymore.

There are still a large number of photo sharing sites, but, after a while, they all start to feel sort of the same. One in particular - Sneppi.com - is an online photo diary solely dedicated to photo sharing as an alternative to text updates or blogs.  (This is a visual culture after all, though most people, even then, only look at am image for an average of three seconds these days).  On Sneppi, you can upload photos, create albums and showcase your photos - and, of course, share them on Facebook and Twitter.  That is, every time a Snepper (a Sneppi user) uploads even one photo, a status update is automatically posted into that user's Twitter feed.

The site, though, doesn't seem to do much else.  Although it's listed as one of the most popular social media sites (according to socialmediawebsites.com), the site has not taken part in another social media trend - that of having a lot of extra features and capabilities.  The home page presents twenty of the latest uploaded photos, and, below that, twenty of the most popular photos (apparently Sneppi has a ranking/voting system akin to Facebook's "like" button).  A word to the wise, though - beware of borderline explicit content.  Sneppi is not regulated or controlled, though I'm sure its terms and regulations does have some fine print clause about 'family appropriate' photos albeit that sort of thing being a mere formality (yet another social media trend).

Like MySpace, Sneppi seems to be popular with wanna-be super models and otherwise unoccupied 'babes', 'hotties', and 'cutechics.'  The current pictorial layout consists mostly of head shots (and other anatomical features) of overly dolled up women, with the majority of the rest being up-close shots of people's faces (and other anatomical features).  To be fair, there are a few catchy photos - pictures by clearly talented artists, shots that look like they were purposely laid out and thoughtfully composed.  Other than that, despite its popularity, the site seems to be a time-sucker.

Businesses would be well advised to consider disabling employee access to sites like this.  While there is clearly some talent displayed on Sneppi, it (unfortunately) takes enough digging that the onslaught of 'hottie' pics with which innocent visitors to the site are greeted might be too turned off (hopefully!) to seek out the true photographers.  On a slightly more 'broad-brush' note, businesses that actually regulate their product or service will bring out the actual talent in their field, and that will certainly better one's business!

Photo Credit: Hugh Gatsby