IVb. The Shibby of Social Networking

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Ok. It's about time I got a little less heady this time. The philosophy stuff is definitely fun for me to write, and you should check the other posts out if you haven't already, but I want this blog to be diverse despite a consistent focus. I've been spending the past couple of days making efforts to link all the latest web networking to my site. The Crimson Fox Photography Facebook page is up and running quite nicely, which is really cool since I've been an avid user of Facebook since the days when it was limited to college students only. I'm working some strategies to make tie ins between my business page and my personal page, and linking up with a lot of the new people that I meet out on shoots. I even found one of my wedding clients, so I look forward to staying in touch with the others too.

It's proving to be quite the resource so I'm looking forward to the St. Patty's Day Pub Crawl in Scottsdale with members of the Meetup group. (There's one iconic shot that I have in mind..I'm pretty sure I can pull it off as long as the bars give me access to what I need. Stay tuned to see how it turns out.) I just joined Twitter as well, and I'll be working on MySpace soon, LinkedIn, and iTunes will definitely be a priority for doing podcast slideshows to distribute without threat of images being copied. I think the slideshows are something that people will really respond to and will do well to get the word out as people pass the podcasts along.

It's the perfect balance between releasing photos without distracting watermarks yet with little threat of them being ripped off. The copy-protection issue is a tough tightrope to walk since watermarks can subdue the power of an image (like in the one seen here) yet without one, people could make off with the images and reproduce them without the professional care that I would extend. I cringe to think of my name being used to represent work that I didn't authorize the reproduction of since its quality may not have been acceptable. I think few people understand the business ramifications of unofficial redistribution; I allow it on Facebook with watermarks because it brings people my way, and I look forward to more and more opportunities to do what I love best.

Any thoughts on this from fellow Facebook and MySpace users would be great!