SCOTLAND’S BEST WEBSITES

1 BLIPFOTO DAILY PHOTO MAGIC

blipfoto.com

On a rainy Sunday in 2006, Edinburgh photographer and designer Joe Tree decided it might be fun to set up a website posting a single photo every day. He started out with what he calls a ‘blurry, unspectacular shot’: just some leaves he’d seen on the way to work. ‘I expected to get bored of it quickly, but found out after a couple

of weeks that not only was it quite an addictive thing to do, but it made me look at the world in a different way.’ He began to let friends know what he was up to, and almost

accidentally built up a following: fans of his pictures would check in to the site everyday, nag him if he was late uploading the day’s photo, and, increasingly, ask if they too could join in. By June that year, the first version of Blipfoto was released onto the net. Five years on, it can boast of users in 160 countries worldwide, and is currently averaging 13 million page views a week. The millionth picture was uploaded this April, and Tree expects to have reached two million by the end of the year. So what exactly is it about this little site that’s engaged so many people?

‘Well, I think at first, it’s that it’s a very simple idea you can understand it in a couple of seconds. You post one photo a day. Beyond that, what keeps people active on the site is the reaction they get. Most Blips will receive on average six comments they’re the lifeblood of what has become a real community.’ On signing up, Blipfoto users agree to abide by the two rules

underpinning the site: you only get to share one picture a day, and the picture has to be taken on that day. It’s partly this, Tree explains, that sets the site apart from Flickr or Facebook. ‘Flickr is a great site, but it’s designed to let you dump a lot of images at once. Because our users are constrained they consider their output far more carefully. If you’re only allowed to put one piece of yourself out there at a time, you spend much more time thinking about what exactly you’re saying with it. And the vast majority of people on Facebook don’t contribute anything or update their pages: they just absorb other people’s lives. Rather than just being another screen to consume passively, what Blip does is give people a shared purpose, something constructive to do which leaves a history.’

Blipfoto now collaborate with, among others, Channel 4 and The Guardian, and receive enough funding to support a small full-time staff, so the future could be even bigger. But don’t expect them to start collecting your data or hosting advertising any time soon. ‘Because we don’t have the noise of advertising our users have described Blipfoto as a calm, contemplative space. I want to keep it that way.’ (Kirstin Innes)

21 Jul–4 Aug 2011 THE LIST 21