Anyone for Sharing Art?

By: Rustycat | in: Design, General, Technology |

We’re way past the long tail effect where niche means money on the Internet. It seems like many entrepreneurs are moving to the art department and specifically media sharing to try and score themselves a community and maybe a few bucks. So little are successful and there’s a slight chance of actually turning profit. So what’s drawing them into the market and into to the art community? We Have MySpace for communities and YouTube for media sharing, so is there a point?

Let’s take a look at four new websites which have recently launched, all dealing directly or indirectly with art and communities. As some may recall I’ve written about Humble Voice a few months ago, where I thought the concept of a community website for artists such as designers and photographers was quite unique. Well, the Humble guys have some competition to look out for now.

Ipernity – Media sharing is the latest watchword on the occasional ‘about’ pages. I personally use Tumblr to save and share my favorite stuff on the net, but it seems Ipernity are giving their users some added value. Basically they’re a media sharing blog network, you can create a profile, customize it, make friends, discover content and share your media with others. The kicker is that you can upload, save and manage multiple files from your computer or from around the net. The design is pretty nice, nothing to write home about and, according to Alexa, it hasn’t boomed yet.

SelfPortrait – is a community for artists seeking a place to share their work and meet other artists. The main difference between them and…Um…everyone else is that they’ve categorized their site in advance. Music, Photography, Film, Studio Arts, Acting, Computer Arts, Fashion and Dance are your options. On the one hand it’s nice to see focused communities but on the other hand they’re limiting their options as a platform. We’ll see where it takes them. They also have a statistic chart which resembles Alexa, design wise. It also illustrates the artist’s popularity in each of these categories. Nice… Useless, but nice.

PikSpot – Guess what? “PikSpot is a new community for groups to share media and make friends”. Surprisingly enough it seems like their Alexa ranking isn’t that promising (altough better than Selfportrait and Ipernity) but their business proposition is. On PikSpot you can create groups, like Ning (which is a great site b.t.w.) .You may then brand it, add people, see stats and even embed it on your blog or website. With their ‘Live Embed’ code you can follow all the latest news and comments from your favorite groups.

ArtFlock – Artflock is probably the most successful art website between all these new communities. Partly because they actually deliver exposure and business opportunities to their users and partly because their design is really good. I’m a big believer in design and UI, it makes the difference. Artflock is an online platform for artists to sell hard copies of their works to potential buyers. Really easy to follow, you can upload your work for free and pay a 25% commission after your work is sold or pay 5 British Pounds a month plus a 10% commission. They’re also offering a future Pro + plan that gives you a website, domain and all the logistics to better sell your art. Great site.

Bottom line – I don’t understand two things:

Where do all these sites get their users from. They’re all basically doing the same thing which is upload-share-expose-communalize. None of them, apart from Artflock, offer any kind of revenue model to the user.
Once again apart form ArtFlock, how are they planning to turn profit? Don’t you have to be huge like MySpace to really earn money on the net? Advertising doesn’t work, trust me (this is not a subconscious message to make you click the banners on the sidebar)

All I can do is play my part and write about these websites while you make the choice whether you have another 30 minutes to kill and go upload some 4 mega pictures.

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Posted on May 7, 2007

Comments

4 Responses to “Anyone for Sharing Art?”

ipodwheels @ Auto Parts Place on May 7th, 2007 5:56 am

Though new sites do excite me, I agree that sometimes it is not very wise to try to reinvent something that is already being done well somewhere. For one, it is quite hard to keep on piling new sites to maintain. I for one keep going to only a few of the sites that i felt were the best in what they do.

I cannot speak for sure though. The internet crowd is a pretty unpredictable group. Who knows when the next Youtube or Digg will come out? I still like the idea of people using their ideas and growing them to challenge sites that are currently monopolizing the web.

Thanks for sharing these cool stuff. Who knows I might just visit them next time I need to kill time.

Charbarred on May 7th, 2007 7:31 am

I think ArtFlock is definitely a much needed site. In fact any site that helps artists capitalize on their art is welcome. As for the other sites, I guess if you think that you can improve on an already existing idea, then it’s well worth trying. Both Ning and Tumblr have many flaws, so it’ll be interesting to see if their competitors can solve these problems.

Ed Lea on May 9th, 2007 4:31 am

Thanks for taking the time to visit ArtFlock.com and for reviewing it here. Exposure is one of the most vital ingredients to the success of an artist and the internet is an ideal resource for that very task. I think ArtFlock.com’s success has been down to the artists who use it. They have provided feedback about what is worth them putting time and effort into - and what isn’t. I take ipodwheels comment about having too many accounts to maintain.

We have been very careful with choosing (sustainable) revenue models for the site, we don’t want artists to put in lots of effort into getting a good presence at ArtFlock.com only for the site to disappear in a year’s time. Also, the revenue model is one that most professional artists recognise from a standard bricks and mortar gallery - making the transition to online that much easier.

It’s still early days at ArtFlock.com so we’ll keep you posted with any exciting developments!