Social media websites give people the power of influence whether
it is through discourse, images, film or all of these mediums. Each
individual is given the potential to shine and create a personal
relationship with his or her audience. Few people reach Internet
fame, only those with the notorious and mysterious 'X-Factor'
manage it, whatever it may be.
One of the most remarkable examples of escalating to fame
through social media is Rosie Hardy from Buxton, developing a
successful and profitable career and gaining thousands of 'fans'
she is Photo-sharing website 'Flicker's' prevalent success story.
Uploading her first image to the site on the 19th April 2008 and
still uploading today, she now has a website, blog, twitter (8,341
followers), facebook, youtube and possibly more profiles on social
network sites. When she signed up to the site she began a 'set' of
photographs entitled a '365' set, a concept created by the sites
community in which a photograph is to be uploaded by the user
everyday for a year, hence '365'. Rosie took on this challenge as
an amateur photographer and throughout her time producing the
photographs, more people began to 'add' her as a contact enabling
them to view her 'photo-stream' (users of the site all have
pragmatical knowledge of these systems), comment on her
photographs, message her and generally watch her progress. She was
able to gain inspiration through comments and ideas on her
photographs and through viewing other people's photo-streams. Once
she had created a following she gained social power, personal
power, and had a personal relationship with 100's of people… this
brought her many exciting opportunities as at the time she was
still at sixth form, working towards her A-Levels. She started
doing album covers for artists, book covers, family portraits,
modeling portfolios and advertising campaign's which enabled her to
fund equipment such as remotes for her camera, props, studio space,
stands, lenses and of course high quality SLR cameras.
She insures to stay true to her humble beginnings by writing her
blog and setting up workshops in Manchester and London to meet and
teach her fans/'friends' tricks of the trade. Her most lucrative
venture made possible through 'Flickr' by far is her presence on
the front cover of the recent 'Maroon 5' album. This is especially
significant as she did not go through agencies or have much
experience previously - the band simply came across her images
while google-ing ideas, without the power of social media it would
not be possible to achieve. Rosie is now photographing several
weddings a month, producing ad campaigns and working with high
profile clients. However it is unusual to become this successful,
she is not an isolated case… musicians such as Justin Bieber and
Esme Denters were founded on 'YouTube' and Justin in particular is
now one of the richest teens in the world, his single 'somebody to
love' has an enormous 166,408,654 views which is fanatical when
compared to Queen's song with the same title only receiving only
1,385,689 views. To conclude, the world of social media is not to
be ignored or underestimated - there are whole audiences out there
and each site now has it's own example of leading people to greater
things. Her website: www.rosiehardy.com her flickr:
www.flickr.com/photos/rosie_hardy
Tagged:
Social media