Blurb Put Final Nail in Facebook & Photography Coffin?

Eirebear

Just going through my emails this morning and i find this email advertising "Enhanced Facebook Photo Books"

Fair enough, i think, people use facebook for all sorts of holiday pictures and the likes - Blurb are just making it easier for them to click and print. That's kind of a good thing.
Then i read further.

Give your favourite Facebook photos the stage they deserve. Create a beautiful,
high-quality book that gives those photos and comments a real home
that’s coffee table-worthy for years to come.


Wedding books in a snap. Travel photo books that recap the highlights. Cool little books that celebrate an event, a great day, a great friend. Use our enhanced workflow to make photo books of your Facebook photos with ease.

Choose from any of your - or your friends’ - Facebook photo albums. Include the captions,
and even the comments, if you want.

Use our newly streamlined editing flow to review and fine-tune your book before you publish.

Make books to give, to show off, to promote your work, or just for fun. Post your book to Facebook to share instantly.

"Or your friends"....Really Blurb? Are you actually giving me the option of going into my firends albums. Many of whom are photographers and use FB as a promotional tool...and simply printing off their work so i can have it on my coffee table?

I guess that's the end of many of my firends using FB for that sort of thing!

I know the whole argument against people using FB for photography, and understand it, but surely this is a real kick in the teeth for anyone who finds it still worth their while?

smash

I'm guessing that your friends have to have applications turned on for this to work?

I always have applications turned off, otherwise you're opening your profile up to all sorts of abuse.

magicbastarder

the claim about high quality from facebook photo albums is dubious too!

Jonnykitedude

The wife bought one of these from some site in the UK, took pictures from my FB account which she was tagged in afaik.
Book came yesterday, quality is crap.

AnCatDubh

Eirebear wrote: »

or your friends

Whoever is responsible for this genius marketing plan deserves a kick in the hole. You can't really be any more blatant than that.

That said when you think of blurb making a buck (pardon the pun) on this, of the 800million facebook user base - how much are serious photographers who know or care anything about what they produce - 0.0000? % ie. blurb haven't thought through other than there are potentially 99.9999? % of 800 facebook users who *might* do a book sometime in their life.

I don't think there is a law broken by "allowing someone to do that" - though in "someone doing that" laws will be broken. Once again we see an image going to the web (anywhere) = giving away an element of control and you need to consider this carefully before putting your images on the web.

While it might be morally reprehensible that Blurb would afford someone the opportunity and facilitate the scraping of photos which individuals have no legitimate rights to, and even make it easy for them to do so, the commercial world has no conscience, has no depth of soul and generally won't care. Unless enough people kick up about it, blog about it, tweet it, post to their facebook status updates, email them, get a topic trending, then meh..... it will just irk people.

:mad:

Professey Chin

Instagram and nights out photo books everywhere!!!! :eek:

smash

AnCatDubh wrote: »

I don't think there is a law broken by "allowing someone to do that" - though in "someone doing that" laws will be broken. Once again we see an image going to the web (anywhere) = giving away an element of control and you need to consider this carefully before putting your images on the web.

Isn't this covered by the fact that the terms and conditions state that anything uploaded to facebook becomes their property? Therefore they can allow a third party to use it.

DaireQuinlan

AnCatDubh wrote: »

I don't think there is a law broken by "allowing someone to do that" - though in "someone doing that" laws will be broken. Once again we see an image going to the web (anywhere) = giving away an element of control and you need to consider this carefully before putting your images on the web.

While it might be morally reprehensible that Blurb would afford someone the opportunity and facilitate the scraping of photos which individuals have no legitimate rights to, and even make it easy for them to do so, the commercial world has no conscience, has no depth of soul and generally won't care. Unless enough people kick up about it, blog about it, tweet it, post to their facebook status updates, email them, get a topic trending, then meh..... it will just irk people.

I'd say if facebook/blurb are doing this they've considered the copyright issues carefully and (without checking) I'm willing to bet it's covered under the facebook T&Cs, something to do with information that you've 'shared' being made available to 'partners' etc etc etc. Don't like it ? deactivate your facebook account

smash

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

Don't like it ? deactivate your facebook account

But delete all your photos before you do that, otherwise they'll still be there

xia

or just don't upload pictures you care about to FB...

ScumLord

I'm sure the idea behind this is if a group of Facebook friends go to an event and are all taking pictures they can all print the best photos from each others set of photos. I'm not against it, most people won't be because it's convenient if your not a serious photographer.

I'm sure every things above board because you basically give away all your rights once you put pictures on Facebook. If your using Facebook for promotion just put low quality watermarked pictures on it, make sure your privacy settings are appropriate and always host your actual content elsewhere with plenty of link backs to your content from Facebook.

If any picture you add to Facebook is done via a shared link to an external website would you more or less be bypassing Facebooks claim to your work?

pete4130

When you sign up to FB you accept their terms and conditions, they retain some sort of ownership or licensing to your images when you upload them, so you are giving them your images. If your friends want to print off images you've uploaded to your page, that FB owns then whats the problem?

Lets be realistic too. People that have a FB page for their photography promotion, aren't really giving off a professional impression if thats the amount of effort they put in.

You agreed to their T&C's so live with them.

ScumLord

pete4130 wrote: »

Lets be realistic too. People that have a FB page for their photography promotion, aren't really giving off a professional impression if thats the amount of effort they put in.

Everything has to have a Facebook page now, I would have thought it would be less professionally not to have one. It should definitely be seen as a promotional tool but just that, a tool and not the toolbox.

K_user

Facebook is a catch22 trap.

People/businesses/clubs use it to promote themselves, because that is where the general public are. Its easy access to a potential 800 million people worldwide and the latest figures show that nearly 50% of the Irish population use it. But easy doesn’t mean free.

The blurb thing doesn’t shock me. Right now there are people reading that advertisement who will think it’s the best idea ever. Most people consider photographs to be a disposable notion. Cameras are everywhere. Anything on the internet is open source. How many PC’s around the world have a background image “stolen” from google images?

Blurb is simply cashing in, it’s a business. And if its successful more will follow. Unfortunately the objections will be in the minority.

K_user

ScumLord wrote: »

Everything has to have a Facebook page now, I would have thought it would be less professionally not to have one. It should definitely be seen as a promotional tool but just that, a tool and not the toolbox.

And twitter, don't forget that.

Sites like FB are now the norm, those that are online expect businesses to have an account.

ScumLord

K_user wrote: »

Facebook is a catch22 trap.

People/businesses/clubs use it to promote themselves, because that is where the general public are. Its easy access to a potential 800 million people worldwide and the latest figures show that nearly 50% of the Irish population use it. But easy doesn’t mean free.

I just recently tried advertising through Facebook. I just ran a basic hunt for fans and got 40 new ones for €50, the stats you get are impressive. I'll have to do a bit more research into Facebook advertising but it seems like it would be a good way for photographers or anybody to target very specific people.

K_user wrote: »

And twitter, don't forget that.

I'm still avoiding Twitter. I don't get it. Especially for businesses, why would customers want any businesses contacting them with random sales tweets?

Eirebear

ScumLord wrote: »

I'm still avoiding Twitter. I don't get it. Especially for businesses, why would customers want any businesses contacting them with random sales tweets?

Twitter is all about interactivity - if you can get people conversing with you it's a fantastic way of promoting yourself. However it's also, at times, like "Shouting into a cave".

ScumLord

Eirebear wrote: »

Twitter is all about interactivity - if you can get people conversing with you it's a fantastic way of promoting yourself.

Sounds kind of dangerous at the same time, you'd have to be very careful what you say.

Syferus

You're not going to start spouting politics, now are you? Very little danger to Twitter unless you don't have a clear idea about your business or how you want to portray it.

ScumLord

Syferus wrote: »

You're not going to start spouting politics, now are you? Very little danger to Twitter unless you don't have a clear idea about your business or how you want to portray it.

There's plenty of examples of someone in a business giving out a personal opinion that ends up backfiring on the business.

I'm sure there is a place for it especially with a photographer who can give out advice and insight into what they do but in general I'd be wary about associating personal opinion with your businesses public image.