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POTUS Twitter account uses header photo from the wrong inauguration

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These days, along with a new US leadership transition, comes the online transition. The White House Flickr account has been scrubbed, changes have been made to the White House website, and social media has had a little bit of a reboot. Including the official @POTUS Twitter account.

The Hill, and several other outlets, are reporting a bit of a cock up with Twitter’s reset, though. The header image originally used on the account was of a crowd waving little American flags in front of the Capitol during the inauguration. The problem was, it wasn’t Trump’s inauguration. It was Obama’s.

This is the last chance to download your Vines before they’re gone

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Launched and subsequently acquired by Twitter in 2012, Vine has been a valuable outlet for many creatives.  The service that let you post your life in six second chunks announced its closure in October, and now it’s finally moving onto the next step in its evolution. Vine will not go away completely, but it will become a camera app. With 200 million active users before its end, users can now publish their short clips straight to Twitter.

Today, though, is the last day that users have to be able to download their Vine videos from the site. So, if you don’t have your clips backed up safely already, you’ll want to hurry. They’ll all be disappearing very soon. Vine haven’t stated the exact hour or timezone that this option will finish, though. While the site says the downloads are only available until the 17th, today is the 18th where I am, and the option is still there.

FTC to crack down on social media celebrity advertising posts

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Bloomberg are reporting that the American Federal Trade Commission are cracking down on social media advertising. Users now must be very clear about paid product endorsements. Users are actually required to do this already, but few do. Many advertisers also request that the social media users not mention it.

It’s understandable why advertisers wouldn’t want the public to know. They want people to believe that somebody actually likes their product. That they love it enough to tell everybody how awesome it is. They also pay a lot more to those who don’t mention sponsorship. What I don’t see is how the FTC are going to be able to realistically enforce it.

19 year old girl banned from social media for posting nude photos of another woman

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19 year old Courtney Marie Mulkentine from Gympie, Queensland, posted photos of her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend to Facebook and removed them after Mulkentine received a phone call from the victim, but by then it was too late.

After pleading guilty to “using an electronic carriage service to harass or offend”, the Australian teenager has been banned from using social media for six months, after the act of “revenge porn”, an increasingly common and worrying practice.

Vanessa Hudgens Slammed For Posting Viral Tea-Tossing Photo on Instagram without Credit

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Last month we shared Michael Davies’ stunning photo of tea being tossed at -40° Celsius, which seemed to have spread online like a wildfire.

The photo even reached actress and singer Vanessa Hudgens who decided to share it on her social media pages, but unfortunately the famous artist didn’t bother crediting Michael.

Angry comments from Instagram followers led to a simple hasthag being added, but the star still hasn’t credited the talented photographer on Facebook or Tumblr.

Will you chime in and help teach the star that copyright matters?

This cheat sheet shows every single profile photo size for every social media platform

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Social media platforms seem to change their image sizes pretty much every time you login. And every time that happens, photographers everywhere have to scour the internet searching for the new sizes. You just know that facebook is going to CRASH your photo if you don’t feed it the exact right size.

Well, here’s some good news: Mainstreethost blog already did the leg work for you.

Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer slams CBS for asking for free photos

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Chances are that in the time it took you to read this sentence, a photographer (or ten) was asked if his photos can be used for free.

This happens all the time and has gotten to the point where it doesn’t faze most people, but when a company valued at over $30 billion asks a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer if they can use his photos in exchange for credit, you know you’ve hit rock bottom.

Keep reading to view the correspondence between award winning photographer David Carson and a Twitter account belonging to CBS.

Social Media Networks Don’t Give a Flying Fudge-Nugget About Your Copyright!

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I have been working on ways to automate some of my social media and blogging activity over the last little while and one of the super useful tools I’ve been using is IFTTT (If This Then That).

However, browsing the recipes on IFTTT I have realized how redonkulously easy it is to fully automate the theft of photography from social media.

It’s so easy its crazy – which leads me to my second thought:

How can it possibly be this easy to automate the theft of copyrighted creative content from social media without the permission or knowledge of the content’s owners!?

Or, in other words – why don’t social media networks give a flying fudge-nugget about copyright???

Retweeters Of A Copyrighted Photo Just got Sued

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By now we should all know that taking someone’s photo and uploading it to social media is not cool (and not legal either). But what happens when you retweet or pin or share a photo that someone else stole? An interesting case now presented to the courts of California may change how easily you retweet photos forever.

California based photographer Dennis Flaherty is suing beverage company Big Red Soda for allegedly posting one of his photos to social media without his permission. Nothing new here. If this is indeed the case, Dennis would probably have a walk in the park in court. What’s more interesting is that Dennis is also suing every single person who retweeted or pinned the photo.

Photographer Convinces Live Nation CEO to Change ‘Work For Free’ Photography Policy

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Sometimes ranting about things works.  On Friday, Jared Polin of FroKnowsPhoto posted a rant in which he expressed his frustration with Live Nation about their policy of not paying photographers for their work while retaining the rights to the images.

After replying to a job ad looking for photographers to cover the opening of their new Ascend Amphitheater, Polin was informed that the position “is a great opportunity to build a portfolio.”  In response, Polin made a video as an open letter to Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino.  In his original bog post, Jared urged readers to “share this out with the world and lets make Michael Rapino hear that he needs to make a change inside his company and #RespectPhotographers.”  And, apparently, it worked.

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