The natural progression of any online community is to take it offline with regular meets and discussions. Given the fact that Yahoo owned photo sharing site Flickr.com over 2.29 million users from India (comScore, March 2010) with over 12,500 groups connected with the term “India” it was time they made efforts to take this community offline. And so that have announced an array of interesting events. Yahoo! India hosted events for Flickr across Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore this month to provide an offline platform for Flickr photo enthusiasts.
These events brought together 200 Flickr community members in each city who shared photography tips, insights and love for pictures in general.
All in all we feel this is a great move by Yahoo India and Flickr as offline community connects brings a real aspect to a virtual connection and also helps make real life impact. I personally know of photography enthusiasts who showcase their work using platforms like twitter.
Why Social Media Has To Go Offline?
The real value of social media is realized when online connections end up translating into offline connections as well. Just like how twitter has tweetups and twestivals which are nothing but community extensions offline for an online platform. I believe this is where facebook needs to integrate an offline event meet up which is branded of sorts though facebook events feature is used to host a plethora of events its not events that are being held because of the existence of facebook. Like tweetups wouldn’t exist if twitter didn’t exist. Similarly I feel Indian social networks can take a leaf out of Flickr’s book and create and initiate such online communities that translate into offline communities as well.
