By Ian Hollidae, 2025/10/01

So OpenAI has decided that mixing social media and AI (generative video) is somehow a good thing. Yesterday's announcement highlights all the things you can possibly do with their new Sora 2 model and iOS app:

* From words to worlds: Start with a prompt or upload an image to create videos with unprecedented realism in any style: cinematic, animated, photorealistic, or surreal.

* Cast yourself and your friends: Create together. With cameos, you and your friends can be characters in your videos. You control how or when your cameo is used.

* Remix everything: Take someone else's creation and put your spin on it. Swap characters, change the vibe, add new scenes, or extend the story.

* Cue the sound: Music, sound effects, and dialogue are automatically included in videos to make every scene complete.

The most obvious question is how is this better than shooting a real video and utilizing all the same features The next most obvious question is does anyone really need this. The third most obvious question is will this be the "killer app" for generative media (or at least enough of a success for VC's to recoup their investments).

I'm sure people will come up with all sorts of responses. I'm guessing a lot of them will not be overly favorable to OpenAI. This all still feels like scrounging around for questions that no one has asked to fit answers only AI companies are shouting about from rooftops.

By Ian Hollidae, 2025/08/20

Does anyone remember Digg? It was one of the first news aggregators on the web. For the most part, it followed the familiar dot.com overeach story: got popular, made changes no one liked, fizzled, then got bought out. Apparently, there's an attempt at a comback. The quote from their beta-test page:

Humanity at the core. Technology at the edges.
We're building a human-first community platform that places authentic community and connection at the forefront. From day one.

The obvious question is how will this new version be any better than the last. And will it be any better than what's available. If new Digg can't solve the major issues plaguing current social media sites, such as gaming the system which was a huge problem on early Digg, then this announcement might as well be some nameless company jumping into the fray.

By Ian Hollidae, 2025/04/23

Has it really been 20 years for YouTube? I remember first visiting the site in early 2006 just to see what it was. I don't remember which video I watched. In fact, it was several years before I watched anything regularly on YouTube at all.

Looking back, given YouTube's wide spread acceptance, it's amazing they haven't faced any serious competition during their existence. I guess as long as streaming video at scale remains expensive, YouTube will have quite a few more happy birthdays.

By Ian Hollidae, 2025/03/17

The inventor of the web, Tim Berners-Lee, wrote an interesting article in the Financial Times (via archive today) about the walled garden nature of social media:

Now let us talk about the opportunity to build new systems that are better for society and for individuals. When the web started, you could make your own website so long as you had a computer and an internet connection (admittedly back then this was a big proviso). You could get a domain name like abc.com and put whatever you liked there. You could blog, and link to other blogs. You were part of an incredibly valuable thing from which you seemed to contribute a tiny bit and gain a great deal.

That feeling of personal empowerment we sometimes call digital sovereignty has since been lost.

Ironically, the original article is sitting behind a paywall.

I admit the article was somewhat of a self promotion piece for his Open Data Institute but that's beside the point. As far as I can tell, he's long been a critic of walled gardens. However, it seems like some of the critism is starting gain more and more of an audience. Is there a real turning point near by?

By Ian Hollidae, 2025/02/07

At the start of my photography project, I thought it might be a good idea to do some research into what the best platforms for sharing photos were. I searched through Google, Reddit, Youtube and various photo-related sites to find as many answers I could. At the time, I wasn't entirely sure what my own criteria for photosharing was. I eventually boiled it down to photo quality, ability to get feedback as a newbie and whether the service had a free tier (since I was new, I didn't want to get stuck with a monthly charge for something I no longer used). It seemed like a good place to start.

However, there was something else I ran across during my research. Articles, comments and forum posts about one platform or another no longer being optimal for sharing pictures.

I didn't know what to make of it initially. Given all the noise you find on the internet, it was easy to label these posts as minor. Photosharing can mean different things to different people and no platform stays the same over time. I decided none of it was important because, in the end, I'd have to start somewhere.

So why am I writing this?

Because years later, I'm still seeing the same types of posts (via Fstoppers) and comments but this time against the backdrop of an emerging video dominance.

Right now, it's clear that video is pulling the cart. I think it's perfectly logical for people to ask what this means for photography. What seems lost in that question is the downstream effect of what does this mean for photosharing. After all, if photography is being diminished, then all photography related items would have to be diminished as well. And it's easy for everyone to come up with their own answers given that point of view.

So for now, my response is based on taking the current problem and pointing out the positive. We live in an age where there are more photgraphs shot, produced and published than at any point in human history. In that context, it's next to impossible to contain photography. And photosharing. If the main issue is that you have to do what you've been doing somewhere else, then I don't see a problem.

In other words, there is no crisis.