You might call it plagiarism. And to some extent, it really is. I just find – not least after reading this article by Alexis C. Madrigal in The Atlantic – that what @HistoryInPics is doing is really, really interesting.
@HistoryInPics share about 5-10 historic photos a day in their Twitter feed, accompanied by one-liners. Today, they have more than 1,4M followers on Twitter. All of these followers are gained organically and there’s only about 5% bots (fake followers).
How is it possible? Well, the simple answer is that their photos are just highly sharable. Each and every tweet is retweeted thousands of times, leading to an astounding reach well beyond the 1,4M followers.
The love for the maritime – in pictures
Given my background and past in @MaerskLine where we – and my old colleagues still do it – tapped into a huge database of Maersk photos (see what we did on Instagram here and here) it was almost a given for me that I should be doing for the maritime world what @HistoryInPics are doing for the rest of the world.
There are so many great ship photos around, both historic and current ones. There are so many categories of ship – lightships, banana boats, freighters, radio ships, ferries, dredgers, clippers, sailing ships and so on.
And quite literally, ships have simply been connecting the world for thousands of years. So ships are weaved into both our history and – equally important – the geography and landscapes of our earth.
So here it is… @ShipsInPics on Twitter!
So will it be a success?
Frankly, I don’t now. And my honest assessment is: Probably not.
But it will be fun, and if I could achieve just 1% of the success @HistoryInPics have had, that would be ok too. But I need to be ambitious, so I’m aiming for 10%.
Therefore, the target is to reach 100k followers on Twitter by end 2014 (it will not happen, I’m sure).
One of the ways to get there is for me to now reach out to cruise lines, shipping companies, ship photographers, ship spotters, boating manufactures, seafarers, shipyards etc. to get their support. And to get their approval to share some of their amazing photos.
Also, people will hopefully start submitting their best ship photos to me for me to share on @ShipsInPics.
Want to help or join?
So if you want to help out and have either found great ship photos that are free to share and/or want me to share your own photos, please send me an email via shipsinpics@gmail.com. I will make sure to credit you, of course.
Or you might even want to join me? I would love to make it a collaborative effort with people around the world who share my interest.
The first 7 photos we shared
Here’s the first 7 photos we shared, in chronological order, starting with our very first tweet:
A couple touring the Everglades, Miami in 1972. Photo by Fred Ward.
The Himiko cruise ship on the Sumida River, Tokyo.
A shipwreck in the Homebush Bay, Australia. Photo by Brent Pearson.
The steamship Princess Sophia in Canada, 1912. She had wireless communications and full electric lighting.
The Dawn Princess of @PrincessCruises, 2009.
The bow of @MaerskLine’s Elly Maersk. Taken by Uffe Juul with a @GoPro and some rope.
HMAS Maryborough during a coordinated patrol in the waters between Australia and Indonesia. Photo by @Australian_Navy.