All this debate about Pinterest made me wonder about what this new social networks mean to our image marketing.
Meanwhile we are terrified with the escalation of piracy and finding tons of cooyrights inflingements around the web, we wonder if this industry has a future or if we are on a sinking boat.





I will start first analysing us compared to the audio and movie industry.
The first major diference is the market. Our images are mainly sold to the corporate market, they use it for advertising, posting information in magazines, newspapers, etc...
Now the music and audio industry is focused on the end customer, those people buy CDs, DVDs and Blurays, listen to the radio or go to the movies paying royalties.






The minute they had access to this content through the internet, they stopped buying this (ok, some still do, but in a much smaller scale now), and the industry is struggling (or at least thats what seems like is happening to me).






Now, the thing is that even though images can be downloaded for the end customer to have them for their delight, its not nearly as fun, yes maybe they will print a copy and hang it on a wall or leave it on a photo album, but images are only fun if you share, show somebody else, print on a tshirt, on your mug, its diferent than music that you listen by yourself at your car, if you know what I mean.
Now, what we are seeing with this social media, is an exponential increase of images being shared, you pin your image in pinterest and immediately its repinned through tons of other boards, you post it on facebook and people you havent heard for ages shows up from nowhere, like it, comment it and share it to some other people you dont know.







Its a diferent world and its scary, but its not our current market, its people, not corporations, so its a whole new opportunity. And, diferently than audio and movies that are downloaded and disappear from the eyes of their industry in somebodies computer or ipod, they stay at the open, visible at the internet, easily traced for us to find a way to generate income from that.






I thnk we are at the edge of something here, and that something might be a tremendous opportunity for us who have the gift to generate this content, images, highly needed for this new market up there.
We just need the tools to make it happen.
Thank you all for your time and your comments on the subject will be highly appreciated.

Cheers

Alexandre Fagundes