JPGmag.com - A Review

Daily Ink

Stored in: Flickr News

Posted On: September 19 2006

By: Bryan Partington

JPG magazine has recently ramped up its intensity level with a complete overhaul of its website, new price and more regular publication schedule. Accepted submissions will earn 100 dollars and a free subscription. By incorporating member profiles and simple drag and drop photo submission, the grassroots publishing project is getting a shiny, professional polish.

It is heartening to see the authentic media extend itself from its foundations on the web and out into the print realm in a more mainstream way.

All of this, of course, will be overshadowed by its JPGmag.com's new promotional strategy.

Ever browsed "Hot or Not"?

That's kind of what browsing the new JPGmag.com is like. There are thumbs up and thumbs down buttons under most of the photos, and clicking one or the other automatically flips you to the next photo that you can vote on.

yeah. nah. yeah. nah. yeah. yeah. yeah. yeah. hmm .. nah. nah. yeah.

I found it exhilarating at first, but afterwards I felt a bit dirty. I got into that "Hot or Not" zone where I was making split second decisions, soaking up the easy thrill of instant judgment.. the fact that one of the current voting themes is 'self-portraiture' doesn't help distance JPGmag from its superficial cousin.

There's no commenting on the photos, which isn't as bad as it sounds. I found that I was thinking about the photos as their own, independent entities, rather than about the owner or their body of work. That was kind of refreshing. The philosophy is like flickr's, but inverted: photos first, community second.

Despite this, self promotion seems to be an important aspect of the site. From the 'promote your photo' page, you can spam a bunch of your friends with the URL to your photo. Presumably so that you can pester them into signing up and voting for it. You can only fill out 5 email fields per photo, which should curtail the really egregious abuses of this system.

The site also provides a "Vote for Me!" badge that you can put up on your website or blog.

Check out mine:

This will, of course, generate massive traffic for the JPGmag.com as people rush to tell as many of their friends as possible to vote for them in hopes of winning that sweet, sweet C-Note. $100 USD is, after all, 5% of Nikon D200.

While the viral promotion/rating system feels like a bit of a gimmick, it think it will probably work out well. It is serving a noble, artfully edited publication, merely narrowing the selection .. something I'm trying to keep in mind while I write this review.

So go check out the site, sign up and submit your photos. Just because I'm a stick in the mud doesn't mean that you should be.

Heck, you'll probably enjoy the rush self-promotion as much as all of my good friends enjoyed posting themselves and voting on 'Hot or Not' a couple of years ago..

..while I rolled my eyes and went back to fiddling around with this new, quirky photo sharing site called flickr.com

That's right, no 'e'.

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