A Pikchur Is Worth 1,000 Words...

"Share, and share alike" could be the mantra for our age, as every one of us now has the tools and means to create and share media, anytime, anywhere, with or without a reason or purpose. Sometimes we post words, sometimes we post video, sometimes we post images. It does not matter. What matters is that everyone of us can create and share content whenever and wherever the mood may strike, and what we share, has instant global distribution.

Lights... CAMERA PHONE... Action!

If digital photography represented an evolution in photography, then camera phones represent a revolution! Now almost everyone ALWAYS has a camera at our immediate disposal. Even more impactful is the fact that with a camera phone, not only is it ridiculously easy to capture an image anywhere and everywhere, but it is also just as easy to post that instant image to the Internet and share it with the world.

FLICKR, PIKCHUR, TWITPIC And Other Made-up Words...

I have always enjoyed photography and can still remember the excitement of my first SLR camera (and the challenges of properly loading a roll of film without "exposing" it). That said, the best pictures I have ever taken have all been taken since the "digital" age, and many of them were taken with a camera phone. I travel a lot, and try to memorialize my trips with pictures, and through sharing those pictures on services like FLICKR, TWITPIC and PIKCHUR. I have previously had two pictures I posted on FLICKR used in other publications as a result of posting them there. This picture of my (former) boat after Hurricane Wilma was used in the GULF STATES MARINE FISHERIES COMMISSION Annual Report to Congress on the storms of 2005. This picture I took in Colonial Williamsburg was used in the official SCHMAP!! East Coast Guide of Parks & Gardens.

A Phone Picture Of A Phoney Phone...

By far the most widely seen of my posted photos has been the photo above of a Kyocera "concept phone" that was on display at the CTIA show in Las Vegas. I took the picture in the Kyocera booth with my phone, a Sprint HTC Touch Pro, and promptly posted it to PIKCHUR.com, so that it would instantaneously be sent to my Twitter stream and posted to both my Facebook and Flickr accounts. (I have met some of the Pikchur team, including Emmanuel Pozo and Peter Martinez, at various South Florida Tech events, and, happy to support the local team, I have been using their slick service to share my images). What I never expected was that this image would be picked up by numerous blogs, including ENGADGET, as part of their CTIA coverage, and in all cases, I was happily given "photo credit" linking back to the image on Pikchur. With all the blogs using that image it was one Pikchur that was worth well more than 1,000 words!

How about you? What media have you created that was unexpectedly spread? Please add links to your sharing successes in the comments! (Oh, and feel free to share this post too!)

Face It, Facebook Works Well As A People Directory!

As you may know if you go back earlier in this blog, I live in South Florida and used to be an avid sailor until Wicked Hurricane Wilma wrecked my boat... Back at the time I posted a bunch of photos of the storm's damage to my home and boat on Flickr and tagged them "Wicked Wilma."

I recently received the following message through Facebook from someone who I don't know and who is not a Facebook friend:

Jeff, I sent you a message already on Flickr but I am trying to get in touch with you seeking permission to use one of your photos in our 2005 Annual Report to Congress. I am trying to find a photo from hurricane Wilma to include in our pub. Please let me know if you are interested.

I thought it was telling that I noticed the message via Facebook, long before I received the email through Flickr. My Flickr account is tied to a Yahoo Mail address that I hardly check on. Facebook, on the other hand, is always open in a browser tab, and has an extremely efficient mobile alert piece that forwards messages right to my Treo via SMS.

The Real Story

More telling was the fact that the person trying to reach me figured out that, when he received no reply to his message via Flickr, he could potentially find me through Facebook. And he did, successfully. The picture above is the image that prompted the search for Sass.

In business, it is often difficult to find a working email address for someone you don't know, and many of the services that do provide contact info, do so for a fee. Facebook provides an easy and open means of making contact with its members. A powerful feature when properly used and not abused.

Have you been contacted randomly through Facebook? Have you successfully made contact with someone you were trying to reach through Facebook? Do all these questions make this sound like one of Chris Brogan's blog posts???