To answer this question quickly — absolutely!
Most often, we have heard this type of question from the more business-centric community. In the past, when we have pitched or explained our dreams to partners and potential investors, this is one of the first questions that always gets asked.
And it makes sense - today’s social media landscape is shaped primarily by several things:
But all these things above is exactly our answer to the suits when we’re asked. These things have left a lingering impression on the photography space online. And it leaves open the opportunity for a new platform to come in built for photography, by photographers.
This is important because there is NO platform out there today that is working in the best interest of the photography community. These features and revenue drivers that we listed above actively work against and harm photographers. Our organic traction has suffered, the ability to reach new viewers and consumers has plummeted, and the works that we share are being hidden on feeds and not being seen - after spending hours of our time creating pieces of art for these platforms.
It's also worth noting that most, if not all, of the major platforms today have been built on the backs of photography. And with each new version they release, they stray further away from the interests of our community. It's time we build a platform that can serve as the home for photogs and enthusiasts alike.
Advertising dollars will play a role in the Anthology suite of services, but we have innovatively designed how we incorporate them into our products and services, so as not to impact the user experience like we see on other platforms.
In fact, we’re dedicated to keeping the vast majority of our platform advertisement free. One of the main reasons we’re building Anthology is because we grew displeased with other social media sites when ads became the key component of their products.
We are being strategic and innovative as to where our advertisement dollars come from regarding the mobile Anthology app. The only ad placement currently in the app is in the bottom of the screen for Flash Challenge prompts.
By doing this, there’s some important things to note:
On the Anthology app, we’re not just building a social media application. We’re not just copy and pasting code, or stealing designs from other platforms (... ahem, *cough*)
Instead, we’re building and providing tools exclusively for photographers - and then integrating those tools organically around a social network on the platform.
Tools such as Portfolios and Explore largely have nothing to do with social media, as they act and serve more in the planning and storage sides of a photographer’s workflow. In the future, we’re planning to expand these tools to cover the distribution and delivery tasks that photographers do as well in their suite of needs.
Social then plugs directly into these toolsets to serve as the basis of the rest of the platform. With these features, we can market to enthusiasts and non-professionals, ensuring that Anthology doesn’t become a site that is only photographers selling and marketing to other photographers.
In the current base version of Anthology, we have built the foundation of photography tools:
Anthology is currently LIVE and is available for download on the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store
We’re not new to this game, take a look at how far we’ve come so far ->
• 2019 - Our CoFounders, Will Ciolino and Thomas Pierce partnered to develop the business plan and the timeline for the Anthology business
• 2020 - work started on our clickable prototype so that we could begin showcasing our idea to photographers and enthusiasts all over the world for their thoughts and feedback
• 2021 - The alpha application was developed and released to a limited number of family and friends for testing and feedback. Toward the end of the year we partnered with a new engineering team and began work on a public beta.
• 2022 - The public beta was released and we worked with several hundred photographers to gather feedback. At the end of the year we recognized that our systems were not optimized for future scaling so we began the search for a new engineering team to redevelop the application for a full release
• 2023 - In February we began work on the rebuild, and the app was recently released in July 2023. This year, we also expanded our core business model to create a community online for photographers to join for free. We released a monthly photo contest that provides monetary rewards for creators, and we began releasing monthly magazines online to showcase and highlight new artists from around the world.
While you may choose to wait for more users to onboard onto Anthology, there are a number of key benefits for joining early to the service ->
As of now, in the first release of the application the following features are available in Anthology:
When you sign up for an account on the Anthology app, you’re not just making another social media account. You’re investing in yourself, completely for free, as you’re joining a service that is committed to providing you a suite of tools that you’re used to using everyday across dozens of other platforms. As we continue to grow, we can promise that your precious time spent dealing with all these other platforms can be saved by just using your Anthology account!
Additionally, you’re joining a community of fellow photographers and enthusiasts! At Anthology, we’re not just making a photo app.
This is because at Anthology, we are 100% dedicated to photography. We love images. We appreciate and support the hard work by creators in this space. And we wish to provide products and services that help promote them, not make them compete with the like of Tiktok trends and invasive for-profit business practices.
As we mentioned above, we’re keeping our platform and social spaces primarily free from ad placements.
But because we are casting a wider net and a suite of services, we have an opportunity to serve ads in an innovative way. For instance, prime placements of ads can still appear in the Flash Challenge prompts, where they are widely seen, controlled by our team, and don’t affect the user experience of the app. Additionally, we can serve advertisements within our monthly magazine, and work with partners and sponsors for our monthly photo contests.
In the future, as mentioned, we plan to create more tools for photographers to serve other areas of their standard workflows. For instance, distribution and delivery tools that connect photographers with their client bases will be integrated within the Portfolios pipeline and will become part of the Anthology Pro portal. This will be a paid for extension of the free base application, however, because we’re not beholden to investors or the stock market, we can provide these services at a significant discount compared to competitors.
We provide a number of ways for you to quickly join our growing community:
Anthology can be found on other platforms - see below for a list of our official accounts:
If you have any suggestions for the future of the Anthology app, have questions about our company or our mission, or just wish to say Hi - contact Will Ciolino!
