By Purdey Miles
A recent report by analyst Mary Meeker has shown that on average more than 500 million photos are shared every single day. With the unprecedented growth of Snapchat, the recent acquisition of Flickr by Yahoo and forever evolving social platforms like LinkedIn adding photo sharing capabilities, are we really that surprised? How often do you find yourself at a social event where there is someone (or many people!!) with the incessant urge to take a photo? Which results in you making the swift and unnatural progression from having fun to awkwardly posing while the smart device struggles to take a photo? Quite often is likely to be the resounding answer!
The forever increasing choice and abilities of social platforms allow us to feed our obsession with picture sharing. Facebook still accounts for the majority of photos being shared, however, platforms like Instagram and, most recently, Snapchat are following closely behind. We are also increasingly seeing other competitors step up their game in order join the race. Earlier this month, LinkedIn added features that allow users to share photos, presentations and documents through their homepage. As the number of these applications grows so do their complexity, which offers users something more and increases their usage alike.
The significance of these photo sharing platforms is being widely recognised. As their popularity has flourished, so have opportunities for companies to cash in. Earlier this month we saw Yahoo purchase Flickr for an almighty sum, and one of the first things they did was undergo a complete make-over of the site. Not only have they re-vamped the site but they’re also offering complimentary storage space in an attempt to differentiate themselves from their competitors.
But why is there such an obsession for people to digitally document their lives? Does it mean that messages can be spread faster and easier with just a photo? Do we do it because we want to outdo our friends? Or is it purely because of vanity - we like looking at ourselves and why not have a photo to do this that we can forever see and instantly access? Perhaps it’s a combination of all three. Nonetheless, it would appear that, upon contemplation, it doesn’t come as such a surprise that we are sharing so many pictures when an abundance of photo sharing applications exist.
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