Photography Community Study

This article is a case study of the popular photo.net photography community. Communities are created to help inform and gather knowledge for a specific purpose such as a hobby or profession. Many photographers will land on this community when they are hobbiest and will turn their hobby into a business by following the articles and forums provided by the community. The community also seems like a great way to promote small photography business and create new contacts.

(a) Their mission statement
Photo.net's mission statement is "To serve busy readers who want clear answers to questions." This is very well accomplished with many articles about photography and equipment.

(b) Tagline
Their tagline is "For photographers to help each other become better." This accentuates the fact that photo.net has been built into a very strong community where the photographers help other photographers.

(c) Back story
Photo.net started out in 1993 as Philip Greenspun's home page at MIT. They have now expanded to over 100,000 photographers to work with each other to help them become better. This gives a great example how photo.net has grown into a large community and it communicates its values clearly.

(d) Storytelling
Photo.net started off as a hobby/personal site where the author indicates his views, shows his photos, and where he wants the website to go. Now that it is a much larger website it showcases many different photographers work and showcases some of the best talent in the world.

(e)Brand personality
The photo.net is a visually appealing site with thumbnails to photos all throughout the website. On the index page of the site you are automatically introduced to some of the top photos that are on the website. It is a very nicely laid out site and you can find exactly what you are looking for in seconds. It follows all of the same colour schemes through out and is a very consistent looking website. All of the tools available are all presented on the top. It is all staffed and managed by top photographers that moderate and choose topics wisely (for example photo of the week).

Photo dot net has now turned into a community that has a pay service where you can have unlimited images in your portfolio, access to surveys and contests as well as access to their forums that help many photographers increase their photography skills.

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