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The Sydney Morning Herald just published an “article” today that can only be called a fully paid for advertorial, poorly disguised as an article.

The article itself starts off by bagging  established photo sharing sites. Actually Flickr and Zenfolio are the only two real photo sharing sites mentioned.  The author then introduces subject of the article and praises the slickness of a site which I can only really describe as a flash version of a photo sharing site from the 1990s. It reminds me of when I first tried Yahoo back in university. Which has of course moved on since then. The author then goes on to paint a dramatic story of unrivalled passion from the creator of the site. Apparently it took him four years to make it. Ouch!
Anyway enough of the aesthetics as the author and the creator of this new photo sharing site have a real gripe which is backed up by quite possibly the most ridiculous and completely unsubstantiated claim I have ever heard.

“Flickr! is a great company, but it’s become a junkyard,” he said. “Unfortunately my great photo of Sydney Harbour Bridge that I worked on for three hours can sit alongside someone else’s photo of Sydney, their snotty-nosed kid, or my friend’s photo of Sydney the dog. It’s not respectful.”

I had to visit this site. Somehow I knew it would be the answer to my dreams. A website which knows what I’m searching for. Telepathically. Alas no. So I used the age old method of typing in Sydney and hitting search. The first result was a picture of a slug. Yes a common garden slug, not even a snotty nosed slug or my mate’s dog Sydney but a lowly slug. In fact it’s not until the third result that there was a picture of a bride and groom in front of the Sydney Opera House.

Search results for "Sydney" on ph.art

Granted if you do the same search on Flickr you get a cat as the first result but look a bit harder and you’ll see why. Flickr uses a mixture of factors to determine the best results to show you. The most important being popularity. Not just the first photo it found with Sydney in the title.  The reason Sydney the cat comes up as the first result is because people love her. She’s had a whopping 136 comments and has been marked  as a favourite 171 times. Far from being a junkyard the photos that come up below Sydney the cat are quite simply stunning. Something I can’t say about the photos on ph.art. That is when I actually find a photo that’s of Sydney, Australia.

Flickr search results for "Sydney"

The fact of the matter is that this man and his site bring nothing new to write about and what’s more laughable is that the journalist who wrote this piece of drivel actually attempted to play the site off against the most respected photo sharing site in the world. My suggestion is to try targeting a niche market next time.

The final nail on the coffin in this whole debacle is that this joke of a site is actually called Ph.Art. Yes that is “fart”. When I first read the article it made me double check that the date on it wasn’t April 1. To wrap things up let me just summarise by saying that most forms of media these days differentiate between what is ad and what is journalism. Television programs disclose all sponsors and commercial agreements. Why then does the Sydney Morning Herald shove this garbage in our faces and expect us to believe it’s actually journalism?  No wonder the newspapers are so scared of bloggers. They make them look like clowns.

Disclaimer: Unlike the papers this blog is a two way communication medium so if you’re the owner of this site, work for the newspaper or just have something to say then please leave a comment. We also clearly mark all commercial sponsorships.

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