JPG Magazine Social Photo Publishing

Every year, the Internet grows, and every year there seems to be a new buzz term or hot technology that gets the net all wired up (so to speak). This year, ’social media’ seems to be the buzz term – and with sites like Digg, Flickr, and Wikipedia, there’s a lot of this ’social media’ to go around. Though not every social media venture has attained success (yet) – it seems that everyone wants on board.

Harnessing the power of people is what it’s all about. People power is remarkably hot, and with the right kind of service, a website powered by people power can be virtually unstoppable, and can attract a legion of devoted fans.

JPG Magazine is hoping to capitalize on this idea. It’s a clever concept, which takes the best of social media sites and expands upon it, by publishing a real life magazine (made out of paper) which is comprised of nothing but user submitted images which were voted up by other users. Every month, a new set of themes is announced, and users try to shoot using the theme as a guideline.

New JPG Features

The JPG Magazine website is an integral part of this process. It needs to be slick, slim, and easy to use. Because of that, it has recently received a few upgrades:

1) For your eyes only box. A small box on your submitted photos that keeps running tallies of how many times your photo has been viewed (not counting your views) and, if it’s a submission, how many Yeah votes it’s received.

2) Favorites. You can easily mark a picture as a favorite, and each photo’s favorites list can be viewed.

3) Photo size toggle. Though it may seem like a small thing, in a voting system it’s important to give each picture equal screen time – so interface is important. You can now toggle between seeing 12 medium photos, or 36 small ones.

4) Social bookmarking. You can now promote your own photos to social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us via the website.

Lossless Business Model

JPG Mag’s service is free. Anyone can sign up for an account, and anyone who has an account can upload or vote on their favorite pictures. Though the magazine itself needs to be purchased, photo contest winners (those who get enough votes) can get a free one-year subscription to the mag plus $100. Despite all this, the magazine can be freely downloaded by anyone in PDF format, with the latest issue here.

It’s really a lossless business model. The great thing for the publishers is that virtually no content creators are necessary. For the users, they get a chance to get their photo in print. For the environment, it means less wasted trees since the required print run is more easily tracked. It’s a clever business model, and while the site may not have the popularity of some of the more major photo sites (yet), it’s this subtle difference which makes it’s potential obvious. It also has some major advertisers already in place, including Flickr and Lensbaby.

JPG Magazine is a social media website, but the difference is they have a tangible end product. Imagine if Digg published a magazine every month with the top twenty or thirty news articles. Subscriptions and possible advertising would significantly offset the cost of producing such a magazine… and it could be a huge draw for fanatic users who would love to get their hands on it.

I’ve been following JPG Magazine for a couple of months now, and it seems to run smoothly, though I haven’t taken the plunge and submitted anything (yet). If you’re interested in photography, go create an account and partake in the community by submitting and voting.