Are you excited for the New Year? I hope you had a wonderful holiday season, shared many laughs and stories with friends and family, and took a lot of pictures (of course).
2021 was a monumental year for the formation of Anthology. We spent much of the year developing and refining the technology foundation of our platform.
Building, launching, refining.
Learning, growing, repeating.
Here’s a quick recap:
I have to take a moment and thank the team behind me for helping us make these accomplishments a reality. The countless hours developing, strategizing, meeting and talking with individuals and artists for feedback, and their constant dedication to the project. Without them, we wouldn’t be where we are right now and I cannot thank them enough.
While it’s always great to review and recap where we were, we are focused on our path forward. With the core of Anthology being built, this year we will be refining these features to make them more efficient and optimized for our users.
But don’t worry. We have some big goals still to announce. Take a look below at some of the goals for Anthology in the New Year.
I mentioned we’ll be launching the beta of Hotspot Challenges pretty soon. Let me back up a second and explain what exactly are Hotspot Challenges.
We are creating a gamified location catalog of picturesque places. Hotspot Challenges are mobile photo contests taking place at special locations within Anthology’s Explore map. At these locations, our users can submit their best shot and share with their friends for a chance to win a monetary prize.
(And hey, we recently launched our Explore Ambassador initiative for anyone who thinks they have spots worthy of being a future Hotspot. Ambassadors get a lifetime royalty payout every time their locations are part of a Hotspot Challenge. Send me a note if you want to talk more.)
Look for more information on this coming soon!
Our team has gotten a number of requests from artists who want a platform that helps them more easily get their photos to their clients. Our next round of upgrades to our system will include private and public album sharing for those that want to give their clients access to their photos, along with some additional functionality that I will share soon.
We have learned a lot this past year from the “photo platforms.” It’s no longer a secret. Still photography artists have lost a place to call theirs. We’ve seen it coming for years with decisions regarding timelines, algorithms, and advertising making our experience less and less inviting. But hey, at least we heard directly from one leader acknowledging that they are no longer a photo sharing app.
With that said – we’re making Anthology that new home for you. Our next update will bring Following functionality to the platform so that you may begin finding and following your favorite photographers. We also have plans to build a social feed and a timeline that actually works. Won’t it be nice to have a feed that doesn’t destroy your photo’s visibility?
With Patronage being still in its initial launch state, we have some functionality and experience goals for this year. Some of the improvements include recurring payment options, memos, and custom thank you options for creators to give back to their patrons.
Similarly, Search will be enhanced this year to include location searching as well as advanced filtering of results.
By far our biggest request from our web users has been “When are you building an Android mobile version?”
Well, this year it will be happening. I will keep you updated as to when we will launch this version, but this is personally my number one goal to complete in 2022.
As always, it’s a pleasure to have this opportunity to build a service like Anthology. My goal is to have Anthology become the platform photographers can go to and know their voices are being heard. And that started on Day 0. I welcome you to reach out and share your experiences as an artist with me anytime.
