This isn't really my kind of topic and, could I have gotten to sleep when I got home tonight, I probably wouldn't be posting at all.  But I couldn't so bear with me...

Robert Scoble posts about getting turned away from a Flickr party because he brought his son along with him and they were only allowing people over 21 into the party.  He's upset because they didn't put that on the invitation which is understandable.  But then he goes too far...

Anyway, competitor SmugMug invites families to its parties (and even holds camping trips for families).

Competitor Zooomr is run by a 20-year-old (who was 18 when he started the company).

Some of my favorite photographers, Matt Roe being one, are even younger.

Oh, well, this motivated me to move all my photos to SmugMug. Now I understand why thousands of people pay SmugMug to host their photos.

Being family supportive is important in this world, particularly with photography.

I have to cry foul at this.  Anyone who has been to an event like this knows there are usually waiters/waitresses walking around with drinks that anyone can take.  These people, by the nature of what they do (carrying a tray around), can't card people.  So the company hosting must card people at the door or risk being exposed to massive liability. 

Remember, if someone under 21 gets drunk at your company's party and then gets in an accident your company can be held liable. 

I don't think its fair to ask Flickr to risk millions of dollars in liability to make their Saturday Night event "family friendly" and I doubt Smugmug would act any differently in this situation (and if they did they'd be fools). 

It certainly isn't fair to drop the entire service because they wouldn't risk that liability.

That said, people are free to do what they want with their photos.  My issue is how comfortable people seem to be getting with treating others unfairly.  I find the trend disturbing.  How would Scoble feel if someone were to stop watching his videos because Fast Company made a similar Gaffe? 

It isn't that far fetched, I know I attended at least one "Over-21" Microsoft event while Scoble was still employed there.  Treat people unfairly and you invite the same treatment in kind which in turn makes it a harsher world for everyone.

Please understand that I don't use Flickr, I don't own stock in Yahoo, and I have no vested interest here.  For me it comes back to that old saying of "First they came for my neighbor, and I said nothing.  Then they came for me and there was no one left to stand with me" 

Pre-Post Note: I'm Back!  Sadly, 10 days off tends to make work pile up so I probably won't have much time to blog until the weekend though.  Right now I'm running myself ragged.

Luckily, fate provided a stop gap in the form of this post.  Overall, I was pretty proud of my "home-grown-written-in-10-minutes" windows script that automatically put up posts while I was on vacation.  But for some reason this one just didn't make it (while all the others did).  I don't know why but given how busy I've been trying to catch up with things I can't help but see it as fortuitous. 

So without further ado I give you one last pre-packaged post...

This post filled me with such joy that I literally couldn't keep the smile off my face.  Here's the quote...

When I started to post my pictures from Myanmar on Flickr in February 2006, I just thought it was a good way of storing my photos at a cheap price. But then I received one comment, two, three… and people even favorited my pics. Mon dieu, there’s someone somewhere who looks at my photos and takes time to leave some messages!

A French editor saw my photos and asked me if I was OK making a book. (No problemo!) My book was released this Christmas and was number 10 on Amazon.fr last week! Lonely Planet, National Geographic Russia, Get Lost, UNESCO Magazine, etc. bought my pictures thru Flickr. And then, the leading French photography agency Eyedea (Rapho, HoaQI, Gamma) contacted me and signed me few weeks ago!

A lot of the time I think the Internet is just no good.  It amplifies the idiots, drowns out the voices of reason and has largely spawned a society based in narcissism.   

But then I see a post like this and my faith is restored.  It reminds me that, while the Internet may do a lot of bad, it also does a lot of good.  It allows talent to get attention without having to jump through hoops designed to keep it from that attention.

That is a really big deal.

The establishment in any industry doesn't like change.  If you have something that's successful you tend to stick with it even after its success starts to wane because you don't want to deal with the change.  But in doing that you stand in the way of a natural cycle of renewal.  You end up putting barriers in front of up-and-coming talent to prop up the fading established talent.

That's part of what's wrong in many industries.

Don't get me wrong, the up-and-comer who is truly talented will eventually succeeded.  But not before spending a lot of time and energy on fighting their way through a pointless series of obstacles.  A fight that tends to diminish their output once they get through it.

The Internet on the other hand creates as close to an open talent economy as we'll probably ever see.  New talent need only put themselves out there and frequent "virtual places" such as message boards to get their work seen.  By doing that they circumvent the establishment all together and can even develop their own audience. 

More to the point, since the Internet has most industries scared into a tizzy the establishment is more likely to cut new comers a break rather than compete against them.  That means more enjoying new talent for all of us and that's a great thing.

So here we are a couple days later and not that much has changed.  After the initial boom of news there wasn't much left to say.  But there are a few tidbits I wanted to follow up on.

It appears that Microsoft is employing the ol' Carrot and the Stick strategy by first making their offer privately but then giving Yahoo only 2 days to respond before they made it public.  I suspect Microsoft senses resistance on their end and wanted to force a quick decision by offering a huge premium with a short time table. 

In that vein I was surprised by Steve Ballmer's tone in his e-mail to Microsoft employees.  To read the e-mail you would think the deal is already done.  Then again, given the meteoric rise of Yahoo's stock on Friday I suspect the deal might very well be done whether Yahoo management likes it or not

I did find it amusing that Microsoft's stock fell on Friday though.  Seems to suggest Wall Street still has no faith in Yahoo.

I was initially surprised that someone else would even think of making a bid for Yahoo.  But after considering it for a while there are still some interesting possibilities there.  Though I think they involve splitting the company in pieces.  Yahoo more than probably any other tech company is worth more than the sum of its parts.  I'd bet that Flickr alone might be (over)valued as high as Yahoo were they not tied to Yahoo.

On a final note, major props to Aaron Stannard of Ajax Marketing Ninja who called this a month ago.  I'm sad to admit it but my first thought when I found out about this wasn't "Wow he's smart" or "That's a really great job" it was "Please God let him be right on #5 too". 

(and off topic may I just say for the record, Please God let him be right on #5 too...because I'm at the end of my rope with it at this point)