National Media Museum in The Commons on Flickr

I'm a relieved man; this evening saw the launch of the National Media Museum's collection in The Commons on Flickr, the culmination of five months work behind the scenes to make sure that the museum was the first in Britain to appear on the site, alongside such luminaries as the Library of Congress, The Powerhouse, The Smithsonian and the Brooklyn Museum.

We've got some wonderful images on there as a starting point; a major showcase of Peter Henry Emerson's work in the late 19th century, some wonderful images from the first Kodak camera, the No.1, from the 1880s, and some hilarious, bizarre and totally engrossing photos from a Yorkshire-based "medium and physic" (taken - and doctored - in the early 20th century, some 70 years before Photoshop).

I can't claim the original contact with Flickr was mine; while we were mulling over the idea in the aftermath of January's initial launch of The Commons (with the Library of Congress' collection), ultimately thanks go to Frankie Roberto who met the wonderful (and wonderfully patient) George Oates from Flickr at a conference in Montreal in early April. He asked the right questions, got the ball rolling and then passed the reins to me.

I oversaw the road to launch, but it was definitely a team effort. I know I could have easily added 100 photos from the archives to Flickr within a day, wrote some bumf about each and then put it live. But we all wanted to avoid this "marketer's approach" - if I'd done that there would have been no passion behind the selections. I'd be doing it as a promotional exercise, not as a glimpse into the stunning collections the museum holds.

We originally hoped to have a early July release; there were two issues that caused us to quickly abandon this date, the launches of the excellent Live by the Lens, Die by the Lens and Sunny Snaps exhibitions. Even in a new media economy the physical has to come first sometimes!

We re-targetted and aimed for late August; the images were confirmed a month in advance, so we could spend the four weeks writing, editing and collating the text, adding the photos to our own site to accompany the Commons launch, and making sure we had all bases covered with the legalities that come with "no known copyright restrictions".

And today, after some hard work across many departments, the images were launched. And I think we achieved something to be proud of, especially when it came the thematic range of the images and the pride with which we approached the exercise.

But more importantly, today saw a museum from what's seen as an unfashionable part of the country jumps ahead of other, much larger UK-based institutions and take its rightful place on Flickr. We're one of the large repositories of images in the world, we've started to deliver on showing off our excellent curatorial reputation and we wanted to add a little more pride to our hometown - Bradford in West Yorkshire is a damn good place.

And finally, I guess we wanted to give the museum an extra present for its 25th anniversary. Hopefully we've achieved that aim an given the museum some attention to be proud of today.

Labels: flickr, media, museum, photography, social

Oh MOMA just illed a man...

In a recent presentation to one of the museums's staff I related the story of the Comcast guy, and how one employee can cause untold damage to a brand and to their customers, even though - superficially at least - it has nothing to do with senior management.

I went for Comcast because while it's a well-known story, I couldn't think of, or find, any museum-related PR faux-pas. I've covered other stories before, but no story fitted the angle I was trying to fill at the time.

Seems I was just a couple of months early.

Let's repeat it again for those that haven't got it yet. Every customer is a potential Flickr professional, or a blog writer with 1000s of visitors, or a big cheese on Digg or Reddit. One wrong move by anyone, and it's fire-fighting time.

Labels: customer, service, web

The 90-9-1 rule and comments on blogs

fav.or.it has released stats on blogosphere commenting statistics and while they don't reach a conclusion it's plain from the distribution analysis that people tend to post comments infrequently as they ping around the blogosphere.

It's not a surprising result - for most active users of blogs what one post talks about today might elicit a comment, however what another post tomorrow talks about might not interest you at all. Same as it ever was. Or, just as likely, there's work to be done so you don't have time to talk online, or you're at the match, or you're spending time out, or you can't be bothered. Whatever.

In essence it still goes back to the old 90:9:1 rule (corresponding to a Zipf Curve). 90% are lurkers, 9% stick their toes in the water once in a while and 1% are the hardcore that make up the majority of posted comments.

So while the format may change (I saw the same stats as fav.or.it's work on blogs in my own work on forums four or five years ago) the propensity to comment (or, more specifically, the propensity not to comment) stays about the same.

I feel the aim for a community manager* should be to get either the 90% lower, or the 1% higher (in other words, more people talking, or more people talking more often). The first one invokes a clearer democracy to the comments/chat, the second invokes more passionate views expressed.

Chris Brogan's blog is featured as one of the test sites (one of the graphed commenters on fav.or.it will be me!) and he's doing exactly what he should be doing to change his own site's 90:9:1 rule, by commenting with the commenters, to gee them up, to get them talking, to get them to come back.

With any blog, forum, messageboard or chatroom, this has to be done as standard if you want to bring more of the 90% into the fold. In fact it's a pre-requisite of the social media marketing economy.


*The important bit for a marketer is to make the 100% larger!

Labels: blogging, community, ethos, management, theory, zipf

Follow Peer Lawther on Twitter

Despite my social media credentials I still remain slightly unconvinced by Twitter in its efforts to gain mass appeal.

I could never see some of my old school friends on there, simply because Twitter gives an aura of the web-savvy which they would probably not abide. Such the life of a niche web application.

But why? Two line Facebook updates are fine for them; SMS is fine for them; but 140 character posts on Twitter? Nah, too geeky ("microblogging" is such a poor description). Even though they're all much the same in terms of communicating via a short-form message (and I feel Twitter raises the game in terms of broadcast-ability) it'll never reach any kind of huge tipping point in the wider world.

Or will it? I'm trying to find an angle with Twitter that would indicate that it has some mass appeal in future. I've been trying for nigh-on two years though, and it still hasn't happened yet.

You're welcome to follow me on Twitter, so I can see where and how the conversation leads, and I'll be happy to follow back. It might finally convince me that Twitter isn't a periphery application, but becoming central to our online lives...

Labels: lawther, microblogging, peer, twitter