Of Trolls, Identity, and Professional Photography

Kathryn Cramer reports that the science fiction web world has been having headaches with anonymous ranters.

At the same time, Jill Walker reports that Dagbladet has had good success by encouraging people to identify themselves. Indeed, in exchange for registration, the Norwegian news site builds you an attractive profile page that connects the account to the rest of your online world.

When someone clicks on my name in the comment thread of a newspaper article, they’ll see my profile page at Dagbladet, which includes not only my comments on that site but also my Twitter posts and posts to my blog. That’s a pretty good way of grounding me, of giving me a context.

The thing that really sells the page, though, is the terrific photo. This got me thinking: could we create a nice marketplace for professional freelance portrait photographs? Something like Derek Powazek's old Pixish, a place where photographers could sell their extra time.

Suppose you're a photographer, and you've got someone coming into your studio for a $500 headshot next Tuesday from 1-3pm. You're going to be all set up. You’ve already booked half the afternoon. If you can get someone who needs a headshot and is willing to come in at 3:30, you could give the a nice price.