Photolog

A fotolog, fotoblog, photoblog or flog is a blog to which a photograph is added per entry or article. The word fotolog in Spanish has two origins: derived from the English photoblog and derived from the site Fotolog.com (one of thousands of blogs belonging to a community).

Classification of photologs

Photologs have six main characteristics, and the preponderance of each of the first three gives rise to very different types of photologs.

Elements of a photo blog

• The picture. The main element of a photolog, and along with the date is the only one that cannot be absent. If the most important thing is the picture is an anthology of images.
• The author's comments. Yes, these are more important than the photo we are facing a photo blog or photoblog.
• Friends' comments. When they are the most important element (and the photo is therefore a pretext) we are facing a photolog to form communities
• Links to friends' photologs. Never this will be the most important element, but to visit the photologs of friends and then the friends of friends makes the photologs of communities a certain type of social software, in the way of Orkut.
• Favorite links. Link sharing can also not be the main feature of a photolog, as in that case it is social markers (sharing favorites).
• The date. A photolog is a logbook and as such the photos must have date. Moreover, the really important thing is the date of publication, rather than the date on which the photo was taken. A set of photos without date is a gallery or photo album.

Photo blog

Typical photo blog

The word fotolog (or photoblog) originally referred to a variant of blog, which basically consists of a gallery of photographic images regularly published by one or more photography lovers. The text is as important or more important than the photo. Generally this illustrates an important aspect of the text and other times the text describes the content of the photo. Comments are often accepted in the form of a guest book, and these usually refer to the photograph, or, like any blog, to the facts reported. There are sites dedicated to hosting these blogs such as Flickr or Blogspot but it is common for these types of photologs to be on a site owned by a single person. In these cases, the author must use a content manager for photologs, such as Movable Type.

Chronological anthology of images

When images are the most important thing, you have an in-between between a photo album and a photo blog. The text, if any, refers to technical aspects of the photo, and the same goes for the comments, which are more likely made by other photographers than by friends.

Photographic projects

There are some absolutely unique chronological anthologies of images, such as the ones mentioned below.

• The Adaption to my Generation, a daily photo project. From October 1, 1998, Jonathan Keller took a photograph every day and then uploaded to the network. Currently instead of a photolog the site shows some of the photos and a video.
• Get in my Belly (Turn in my stomach.) This gallery is from Adam Seifer (Cypher) one of the creators of Fotolog.com, and puts photos of the main dishes of what he eats.
• project: alphabet (alphabet project). Pictures with objects that look like letters are shown: two oranges form a B, the propeller of an airplane is an X. It started in February 2003 and in March 2005 it exceeded 1000 photos.

Photoblogging Communities

Photoblog communities were born from the explosive success of Fotolog.com, an American site that allows you to create free photoblogs. It was created in May 2002 and in February 2005 it exceeded one million users.

The fact that it is free, added to a guestbook and the possibility of visiting friends' photoblogs, turned this site into a kind of social software or social network. Brazilian users quickly surpassed the Americans, and in January 2005 they were 35%. The second majority of users is Chile (9% in January), the fourth is Argentina (4.4%) and the fifth is Spain (1.6%). The United States is in third place.

The influence of Fotolog.com in Latin America is such that in both Spanish and Portuguese the word fotolog is used much more than fotoblog. In English, on the other hand, fotolog refers exclusively to the Fotolog.com site, photolog has a rather reduced use and the word in common use continues to be photoblog (see photoblog on the English Wikipedia).

The Fotolog.com scheme

Many sites have copied Fotolog.com in almost identical fashion. The structure invented by this site is that the most recent photo, with a size of about 12×8 cm, is in the central part of the screen. Below are comments in the form of a guestbook. On the left there are 5 or 6 thumbnails of the previous photos and on the right thumbnails of the last photo from friends' photologs. Finally, below these thumbnails are favorite links, which are usually photologs on other sites. In general, the number of photos is limited not in quantity but in the number of daily photos that can be uploaded. The number of messages (posts) that can be written on each photo is also limited, being 50 for free users, and 200 for paid users.

This type of photo blog is a trend among teenagers. The only age statistics available is that of PhotoBlog, a site oriented towards photographers. However, 58% of members are under 18 years of age. It is possible that on other sites, specifically dedicated to a youth audience, the figure is even higher. In addition, a study by the consultancy Divergente found that almost all [users are] adolescents between the ages of 12 and 20.

Most of these sites are not funded, despite having advertising, and have gold users who help cover the costs. The Fotolog.com reference is so powerful that the word gold is not translated.

History

The success of Fotolog.com led to the appearance of copies, including Fotolog.cl, a non-profit project with the same characteristics. Fotolog.cl was founded on November 26, 2003 and in its first version it reached almost 40,000 users. On September 29, 2004 they decided to delete all users and start from scratch. In April 2005, this site exceeded 100,000 users, and in January 2007 it reached 400,000. In 2006 it became the fotolog with the most users in Chile, surpassing Terra. In 2008 it had 600,000 accounts.

The second Spanish-American copy of Fotolog.com (and for a long time the one with the most users) is another Chilean site, Jotelog.cl. This site reached 100,000 users in January 2005 and 150,000 in August of the same year

In July 2004, Terra Brasil's photoblogging site appeared, followed shortly by Terra Chile's. This last site ended in 2005 with more than 260,000 users.

The only non-Latin copy of Fotolog.net is PhotoBlog.be, today PhotoBlog.net. However, in this Belgian site Chileans and Brazilians also predominate. In April 2005 it surpassed 80,000 users, but its growth has slowed a lot since the site stopped being free after three months of use.

In 2004 Brazilian versions appeared, such as Flog Brasil.

In July 2004 Terra Brazil created its fotolog, which has free and paid versions, and allows you to send photos from a cell phone. At the beginning of May 2005, they exceeded 500,000 users. In September the Chile site appeared (which in August 2005 exceeded 200,000 users). Terra has been incorporating other countries without much success, except in the case of Terra Argentina, which started in February 2005 and in July already had 150,000 users. Soon after, it surpassed Chile and then reached first place. At the end of October 2006, the Terra Argentina photoblog had almost 970,000 users.

Apparently it is possible to find free programs to make clones of Fotolog.com, and in any case they keep appearing. Segmentation has reached such a degree that GayFotolog exists, with the ingenious feature that only registered users can post comments, thereby avoiding the usual homophobia in these cases. Another curiosity is pornographic photo blogs, such as SexFlog.com, in which the photos are supposedly of amateurs. Or there has also been the case of examples such as SexyFlog.com, which, although it is not erotic per se, allows users to upload erotic photos without censoring them.

While photo blogs were gaining ground in people's daily lives, a very useful tool emerged to take into account. In February 2006, the first site dedicated purely and exclusively to being a ranking of fotologs called TopFotologs.com was created. In the following month TopFlogs.com follows in his footsteps, both have the characteristic of non-discrimination from the site, these rankings were the first to be fully automated and friendly due to their fast system of use and their simplicity.

They look for photographers and get communities of friends

Two of the best-known providers of photoblogs, Fotolog.com and PhotoBlog, target an international, English-speaking audience eager to publicize their photos, yet the majority of their users are young people eager to form communities of friends. As already said, the probable cause of this fact is the possibility of visiting the fotologs of friends of friends.

The following quote partly justifies the statement that Fotolog.com prefers photographers to communities. Do my photos need to be artistic? Not necessarily. They can be whatever you want. But if every day you make an effort to upload a new better photo, you will see that little by little you will become a better photographer. This approach is unthinkable in Jotelog.cl or other Chilean clones.

In PhotoBlog there were 58% of adolescent users. The country with the most members was Chile (35%) and then came Brazil. Although its owners initially appreciated the Chilean and Brazilian presence, they later changed their minds. In a post on their blog they said For people who are looking for a free solution: please open a free account somewhere else. PhotoBlog is looking for committed photographers with the ambition to build a high-value portfolio and network. To reduce teen users, a while ago they started charging after the third month of registration. This has meant that the number of Chilean users has remained practically static throughout 2005. Internet Archive shows that PhotoBlog.be was a photography site until April 2009.

Communities of photoblogs in Spanish

Contrasting with the more than ten clones of Fotolog.com, there are almost no fotolog communities that have departed from the model. An important case is the Spanish site es·f·LOG, which were the first in Spanish not made in Chile. This site has the same features that made Fotolog.com popular—free, with importance to comments and links to friends' fotologs—although with a different layout. In April 2005 it exceeded 10,000 users and in December 2007 it reached 120,000 Although it was created 8 months after fotolog.cl, apparently they were filling a gap on the peninsular web because at its launch they said "it was time that there would be one in Spanish for all of us!” There is also a new alternative in Spanish called Flogup.com, very fast, powerful and easy to use.

There is also FlashBlog, which is an open source project, free software, released under the GNU/GPL license whose objective is to be a weblog creation tool in the style of Movable Type or WordPress, but completely made in Flash.

They look for communities of friends

Most of the copies of Fotolog.com have opted right for the communities of friends, as evidenced by the following slogans:

• Jotelog.cl: “jotea con la mayor comunidad de jotes online”. The jote is a Chilean vulture and in Chilean speech, jotear is to roam near a person with the intention of conquering or flirting. In other words, the purpose of this site is to admire young women or men and write in their visiting books.
• Terra: “Show the world who you are”
• flogbrasil: “The World’s largest photon community.” This slogan is false, since its very respectable 700 000 users reached in April 2005 leave it far behind from Fotolog.net.
• Flogup.com: “Art is you” Here they give a lot of prominence to users.
• flohoo.com: “Share your photos with the world”

Other copies of Fotolog.com opted for a different strategy, with the apparent illusion of freedom of the free software community, they promote their site with the slogan "The only fotolog in the world without limits", such This is the case of kfotos.net, which does not limit the number of photos that the user can publish.

Demographics

Here are two statistics that show why almost all photoblogging community sites are Chilean. Keep in mind that these statistics are highly unreliable, but there is no better data.

On the one hand, we will see the number of Fotologs on Fotolog.com per thousand inhabitants. Here you have to think that many people lie about their country.

The second statistic is the number of photologs on Terra per thousand inhabitants. Each of the Terra sites departed at a different time, and no one forces a person to sign up for their own country's Terra site, so these numbers are less reliable than those from Fotolog.com. However, Terra has been in Spanish since 2004, and Fotolog.com since 2006. Thus, people who would never use a site in English signed up for Terra.

Gold Camera

The Gold Camera or better known as GoldCam, is a Fotolog system in which the account has benefits such as:

• Upload 10 photos daily.
• Personalized image of the title.
• 200 tickets in the visit book per photo.
• Appear on the home page.
• Delete and upload your photo again for 24 hours.
• Vineyard in the messages from the visit book.

Photologs in the news

Photologs were important in the 2006 student mobilization in Chile.

In November 2007, Consultora Divergente published a study on photologs that was reviewed in several Chilean media outlets.