Rise of Social Media

A TAXI team member posted a great tweet yesterday about the growth about Social Media in our everyday lives. It is no secret that Social Networks and Social Media are the new buzzwords online. The numbers do not lie.

Facebook has grown from 100 to 200 million users in less than 8 months, Youtube roughly gets 100 million unique views a month and Twitter has grown 1,382 percent within the last year. In my humble opinion, this is no longer just hype, this is a fundamental shift in the way the world communicates and in short, this is truly, a revolution.

And yes, as much as you possibly can, you would need to have a share of these numbers on your side. The question now is, what next?

Get the World on Your Side

Here at TAXI, we embrace the power of Social Media and we do recognize its importance in our everyday lives. In the past week if you've noticed, we've added a HUGE Yellow Button to all our portfolios and our editorial segments. It's a fairly simple addition but it has yielded interesting results.

A quick hover will allow you to announce your portfolio on your Facebook, Twitter and Myspace accounts. You can also do the same if you come across a great portfolio. We want to build TAXI as a community and do share other great portfolios as well. “The Big Yellow Button” is also a great tool to bookmark useful articles on bookmarking sites such as Digg, Reddit and Delicious

Also, everytime you update your portfolio, you may also import a contact list of your clients and partners to inform them to check out your latest update. And when they visit, make them fall in love with your works, and if they do, they'd share your portfolio with their personal and professional networks on Facebook or Twitter. It's that easy, and that's the point -- you spend your time making great work and make people do the talking for you.


What's Cookin'

In the coming week, we will be adding some very interesting features to help prospects navigate through your amazing portfolios. As much as it is important to create great features to help portfolio members, it is also important to create features to help the clients and buyers navigate through your works.

Since our launch, there has been feedback that images shown on the main page are on the smaller side and the automatic cropping does not do some of your gallery thumbnails justice. We listened, and will be implementing a hover function on every thumbnail that is featured on the main page. Once the thumbnail is hovered, a lightbox will appear showing a larger image. This will allow art directors and buyers to view clearer pictures while browsing for potential hires on our main page.

Also, one common request from all of you is the requirement for you gallery images to be cropped in different sizes. What we're working on right is just that. When the new features are ready, you can show images on the gallery thumbnails in Portrait, Landscape or Square sizes. This will allow more control on how your images can be shown.

At TAXI, creating the best experience for your prospective clients and buyers is a very important goal. And yes, we're inching closer to that goal, and we need your continued participation to make us even better.

Till next week, keep the great works coming in and do enjoy your experience at TAXI.