March 18, 2004
Camera Phone Culture on the Web
In an interview with Marc Brown, co-founder of moblogging community buzznet, The LA Times describes photoblogging and the rise of camera phone culture.
"So far, the site has 10,000 registered users — and has been growing at a rate of 50% to 100% per month, according to Marc Brown, one of Buzznet's two founders. Buzznet and other sites like it have tapped into the phenomenon of moblogging (short for mobile phone web logging), in which cellphone technology has fully collided with blog culture.
Quotes
"In the photo blogging universe, trading pictures is now almost as important as taking pictures," says Adam Fisher, a senior editor at Wired magazine. "It's a very different culture from regular blogging, where posting is paramount."
To Brown, "the emerging camera phone culture has the ability to shed new light on events, such as political rallies, parties and music concerts."
Buzznet is not just about playing paparazzi. There is also an ethos of the everyday that gives it mass appeal, and for every celebrity shot there are countless baby photos of ordinary folk. "There's only so many photos of babies that people really want to look at," Brown says. He equipped the site with private galleries, viewable only by proud grandparents, for instance, to spare the rest of us.
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