First of all I was like “another Social networking site”. Do I really need this? So in the beginning I was a little sceptical if Google+ is really necessary or not.

On the first view the place looks very simple, I would even say “minimalistic”. The handling of the site is also simple, easy to understand, even for beginners.

I have to say that Google is doing a lot right here. Google+ feels like a mixture between Facebook, Tumblr and “art-communities” like DeviantArt or Flickr. But Google+ takes the best out of this three. Posting your own works is easier, the picture viewer looks better than on Facebook. Sharing work is more personal than on Tumblr and Google+ does not bother you with advertising or premium accounts like some of the big “art-communities” do.

Google also offers a crispy (iphone, android) app for Google+ that lets your manage your account and browse other peoples posts easily.

So is Google+ an alternative to Facebook?                                                                                                                                                                 In my opinion it is the better place if you are:

1.an artist

2. an “art-lover”

3. someone who already uses a Tumblr-blog

Flickr

I had a Flickr account for a couple of years, but never really used it. I made a new one a couple of days ago to really check this place out and for this review.

What I like about Flickr is the possibility to connect it with many other services like for example with my WordPress-blog. This gives Flickr also a kind of omnipresence on the web and we will soon find out if this is really deserved.

So after I created the account (with my Facebook log in) I uploaded 6 pictures and then wanted to do one of the most important things you do in a community: adding contacts. Flickr offers connections with Facebook, gmail- hotmail and yahoo email-accounts to search your contacts for Flickr-accounts. After Flickr found about 50 contacts of mine with accounts there I started to add this people to my contacts. After a while it did not work anymore. No explanation, no error message , nada. I then tried to add people manually and received and error message that was totally unclear for me. Finally when I tried to “watch someone back” Flickr  told me what the story is:  new accounts are always suspected to be “spam”.  Means, for Flickr every new account and so also potential customer is in the beginning a potential criminal. But they are so nice to give you the possibility to prove that you are not a spammer. I found the paragraph in the facts and it says that every new account is limited in many things until you proved that you are not a spammer. I wrote an email to the Flickr support to find out if there is anything I can do to make this process faster and to show my honesty. I received an e-mail back after an hour with just two links to the facts inside which had absolutely nothing to do with the question I asked them.

Next disappointment came just after that. From the 20 people I was allowed to add to my contacts on the first day only 2 had uploaded a picture within the last 4 months. Means basically all of my contacts were not active on Flickr anymore. I started to look for some groups to add my work there, because many people always told me how awesome the Flickr groups are. Like on dA I found thousands of groups and also like on dA most of them were not active anymore. If the last message from the group admin is from 2008 then you don´t have no questions anymore.

The design:
The design of Flickr is very basic and simple, some might call it even ugly.  It has not changed very much over the years.

The art:
mostly Photography, some people also post photographs of their paintings

The community:
everyone WAS on Flickr.

The level:
everything form snapshots to some real good art

Pros and Cons:
P:
- free basic membership is decent

- possibility to post pictures in private folders

C:
- boring design
- no changes over the years
- very low amount of views on your works

- strange policy regarding new accounts

- customer support is not willing to help

My account on Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/white-canvas/

Result:
The only reason to Flickr in 2011 is if you want to use one of the many connections other platforms have with Flickr, for example to show your Flickr-stream on your blog.

Except for that Flickr feels like a relict from 2005 and it also looks like one. It always lived from its popularity and the pure amount of users. But most of this users are gone now and Yahoo seems to be unwilling to put any more work into the place. If you want to upload your pictures “only for friends” googles Picasa http://picasa.google.com/mac/ might work much better for you, also Facebook makes Flickr obsolete.

No, actually this is not cool. Not cool at all. I checked all this places and about 7 or 8 were already down. (Domain for sale, server not reachable etc). Some other places seem not be updated in the last couple of years. And here is exactly the problem.

There was a time when everyone thought it might be a goldmine to create a place where people can sell and buy artworks online. But it is not. It is a pretty tough game. Especially when you have the costs for the servers etc. There are not that many people interested in spending money for art and not all of them like to do it on the internet. Also there is not an unlimited amount of great artists out there.

So now we have the situation that we have hundreds of this places on the net and without the right knowledge you probably end up on the wrong one. As a buyer or as an artist. Especially as an artist it can be really a problem. You want to have you work everywhere? Cool. But do you also want to spend a couple of hours of your precious time to upload your works on a website that has basically not been visited by any potential buyers in months?

Wasting time on the net is easy. Don´t waste your time with this stuff.

Here is a list of some places that are still busy and alive:

http://imagekind.com

http://www.zazzle.com

http://fineartamerica.com

http://www.artistrising.com

You are unique, just like the art you produce you will always be different from the normal, you took that decision the day you picked up a camera, the day you picked up a brush, the day you wrote prose, be proud of what you are, you are an artist, you are art, when you feel it within your soul, when you can’t get the paint out from the creases in your fingertips, when you carry your camera everywhere, when you can’t leave the house without paper and pencils and a story is always unfolding in your mind no matter what you are doing, can you then say you are an artist.

Words by Mike Shaw http://mike-shaw-photography.com/

Today I will start with Fotoblur. http://www.fotoblur.com/

I joined Fotoblur in 2010 to block my name: chinastone and in case I might want to use it in the future.

I only posted one picture there, because I was not really convinced by the place.  Two weeks ago I came back to Shadowness and Fotoblur to give both places a second try. I started to post some works on both places and was waiting for something to happen.

While I felt directly “home” at Shadowness I felt kind of lost at Fotoblur. The place feels like the little brother of ArtLimited but is as far not as welcoming as AL.

The design:

Journal Entry: Fri Apr 1, 2011, 7:27 PM

http://shadowness.com/SummitGallery

Check out our new blog:

http://summitgallery.blogspot.com/

And our new Facebook fanpage:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Summit-Gallery/182847001762009

Thank you for your support.

Cheers Dan