I’ve written a lot about Instagram and how you can use it for your church. However, I’ve never been a big fan of giving away digital property to a company with no guarantee that will I get it back. So when I heard that John Saddington had started a new photo sharing service called Pressgram, I was intrigued.
After doing some research, I’m quite impressed with what John has created. I then decided it would be a good idea to grab John for a quick interview and let him talk about Pressgram. John agreed and was kind enough to answer a few questions.
What inspired you to start Pressgram?
The inspiration was simple. I wanted to publish filtered photos on my WordPress blog without the issue of being a commercial product of Facebook or Instagram (being exploited for their commercial goals). I wanted complete control over my work and content. There wasn’t a simple way to do this so I began to explore the option of building it myself. We typically call this “scratching your own itch.” I had a big one to scratch!
What do you tell people who fear that they may lose the time and effort that they’ve already invested in Instagram or Facebook?
That’s easy. I tell them that it’s a legitimate fear and it’s a possibility with or without Pressgram (or any other option for that matter). Facebook and Instagram can shut down their doors tomorrow for all anyone knows (and for whatever reason). In the end, if history proves to be true, all technology companies end their reign of absolute dominance. I doubt Facebook and Instagram are impervious to history’s trend data!
Which brings up an important question: Do you really care about the “continuity” of your data? Do you really care about the preservation of your work without fear or anxiety of being swallowed whole or disappearing? If so, then you should endeavor to use solutions that will allow you to ultimately keep your work and have peace of mind about it. If you publish your image and your content to a system that you control, then you have true continuity and preservation of data. Even if Pressgram were to disappear, you’d still have those images on your blog.
Can Pressgram help with SEO? If so, how?
Yes. Images are a huge part of direct and organic traffic on the web. In our Alpha / Beta group we’ve seen increases of over 20% in terms of pageviews and site visits alone! Also this is only in a short-term trial! The long-term benefits of housing all that increased data, content, and images for search engines to index and return as results for users is going to be a boon for all bloggers and online publishers.
The simple fact is that if you publish more, you become a more attractive source of information for search engines. I’m already enjoying a 23% increase of traffic week over week… and I was already getting some good figures!
Editor’s Note: Thanks John for taking the time for an interview. If you (the reader) have not checked out Pressgram, I suggest you head over to their site and sign up for the news updates so you can be notified when it will launch.