Pictures & People

Paid Content pointed me to a welcome notice today, that Six Apart was planning to launch a new blogging platform, code named Project Comet, that promises to make it easier to post images.

In a press release Six Apart president and co-founder Mena Trott said: “When we began development work on Project Comet, we thought long and hard about the kind of platform needed to bring anyone — including people like my mother — – into the mainstream of weblogging. “What would motivate people to blog? What tools would make it easy? How can we make it fun?”

I switched to one of the Six Apart blogging platforms a few weeks ago and can’t figure out how to upload images, but then I’m slow on the technical uptake so all I can say is — hurry Comet!

Picture this: The driving push behind the Six Apart upgrade becomes obvious after looking at a Nielsen/NetRatings report issued September 13 and titled, “Web Image Hosting Sites Show Explosive Growth.” The report charts unique visitor growth at five such sites — PhotoBucket, ImageShack, Putfile.com, TinyPic.com and Imageavenue.com — and finds a four-fold increase in traffic between January, when they had 2.9 million unique visitors per month, and August, when the comparable figure was 14.7 million. According to the report, “Traffic to image hosting web sites has skyrocketed due to the massive rise in blogging activity seen since the beginning of this year.” Maybe folks like me who can’t figure out how to post pics on the ir blogs are parking them elsewhere. In the press release Nielsen/NetRatings senior research manager Jon Gibbs said, “Simple text-based –diaries’ have evolved into a more image-oriented presentation.” By the way I noticed that their offices are in Milpitas, which is just down the road from me. I’d have thunk they were in NYC.

Citizen confab: Speaking of the Big Apple, the Associated Press is holding a We Media conclave at its headquarters in Manhattan on Wednesday, October 5. The $695 program will feature luminaries galore including bloggers Ana Marie ( Wonkette) Cox, Jay ( Press Think) Rosen, Jason ( Weblogs, Inc.) Calacanis and Craig ( craigslist) Newmark.

Such a bargain: Arguably the premier conference in the new media space is the Web 2.0 gathering that will be held in San Francisco October 5-7. The speakers list is top drawer, but the $2,800 registration fee is steep. But I happened to notice that John Battelle, one of the organizers of Web 2.0, will hold an October 20 seminar in San Francisco entitled, “How Search Drives Media and Media Drives Search.” The conference, which costs under $50, will afford a chance to meet Battelle, whose recent book, “The Search,” cemented his position as an authority on the topic. Wired Magazine published an excerpt from the book if you want to catch the flavor of Battelle’s writing.

Tom Abate
MiniMediaGuy
‘Cause if you ain’t Mass Media, you’re Mini Media