Adam Seifer from Fotolog

Yesterday I met with Adam Seifer founder of Fotolog. How ironic it is that when someone comes to show you something so extremely successful yet at the same time completely incomprehensible. If someone had told me that a photo website that only lets you upload a single picture per day would get more hits than the famous Flickr, I would think they were yanking my chain. But that’s Fotolog´s story. With a mere allowance of one photo upload daily, the site has an Alexa ranking of the 26th most viewed site in the whole world while Flickr trails at 42. Adam swears by Fotolog himself, and has been using it to aliment a peculiar habit of his: photographing the food he eats, for the past five years (no, he’s not fat). When I asked Adam how uploading one photo could possibly be more popular than displaying an entire Spring Break memory card’s worth, he explained that with just one, it’s the best, and everyone sees it.

Another interesting fact about Fotolog is that it’s had incredible success in my native Argentina, where, with 1.3 million visitors last month alone, it’s the fourth most visited internet site. Fotolog also has fan bases in Chile, Brazil, Spain and Portugal. Via Fotolog, a community based on the sending of a single daily photo has been created.

What advise would I have for Fotolog? Clearly they should run with the success of the one-a-day genius and allow for a daily video upload as well. And instead of Google ads they should publicize brands that appeal to the site’s users, the 15 to 25-year-old crowd. I recommended such favorites as Puma, Adidas, Diesel, Nike, Pepe Jeans, Miss Sixty, H&M, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, as well as all that relates to photography. Fotolog should charge visitors to upload additional material, and renovate the already-existing but under-used “premium” category which they do but they have to find a better way to do this. A few tweaks to the Fotolog site would give a huge boost to advertising profits.