The Uberization of Photography

Uber has revolutionized mobility and transport services; Fundamentally led to disruption to the traditional markets, provided affordability, convenience at finger tips to consumers and given a wider choice of selection.

The Uber model at its heart has a platform with Network effects. More partners leading to More?Customers; More customers leading to More Partners and thus creating a positive network effect.

Whilst Uber's core business model was network effects that are being monetized by providing a car to a customer with convenience and an experience. Customer no longer needs to plan to call, but simply book a car of his choice using an app for the experience.

As Uber started slowly spreading its value, Technology being at its core became the livelihood of partners and?Drivers?and then to increase its network effects, started diversifying across the value chain to provide convenient options and additional income to its partners. Uber has encouraged its partners to look for work in other areas of its business, including Uber Freight, on-demand recruitment platform Uber Works and Uber Eats. So, Uber wants to be a one-stop and is moving closer to becoming a super- app by launching a new product that allows users to book experiences such as dinner reservations and live events. The whole experience could be felt seamlessly through a mobile app.?The whole uberization has been driven by platformication, experience and commoditization of A.I and DATA. Fast Forward to today, we are seeing Uberization effects in every industry.

One such Industry that has traditionally focused on celebrations, festivities, music or nature has been photography. Traditionally, the market has been unorganized, limited making the discovery difficult and professional photographers used to charge a fortune. This is like a complete?dejavu for cabs and taxis prior to Uber. Quality of photographers?was not known and they were charged based on referrals and spontaneity, with no guarantee of service levels/ quality and consumers?could hardly?treat this as an experience .?

Customers traditionally were cost conscious, thus focused on # snaps over quality to keep within budget. We had the SLRs that were prohibitive; but, with the spread of Digital/Mobile cameras and the quality of pixels going up, Photography was no longer a restricted privilege. The advent of smartphones and drones, the need for quality photographers has gone up multi-fold and there is not a marketplace for consumers to pick a reliable photographer; rather rely on word of mouth and end up with high quality studios that charge a fortune in spite of being in a digital era.

Gen-z and the likes have strong preferences and ideas on how the digital experiences have to be and do not mind paying a premium for the quality and need digital convenience and ability to interact with social media at the click of a button. Whilst Enterprises are looking at tightly integrated photography services that meet their SLAs.

Currently the path to photography is not easy and as a result, the professional photographers are expensive and not easy to find and is not a viable career either and not every photographer are well equipped with Gen-z social media such as discord , etc. .

Platformification aka uberization has been applied to many business models and photography is no exception.

Companies like snappr, meero, oneglint have seriously embraced the uberization model and its network effects and taken photography to the next level. Currently, anybody with a car and a smartphone could become an uber driver, an extra bed and room could become an AirBnB host.?Photography is not the same as becoming an uber driver or AirBnB host. Photography is an artistic skill that blends technology with taste and is a continuous journey.?

The app like Uber for photography will provide photographers with their services (Photography, aerial photography, cinematography etc.), fees, reviews and their schedule management including on-demand to advance bookings, allows the photographer to list, provide flexibility for customers to interact before scheduling, leave feedback as needed and ability to interact/pull and push to social media giving a better and seamless experience to Baby boomers to Gen-z .

This uberized app allows the user to identify their current or desired location for the photography session, after which the app will recommend the best photographers in that area. The user is able to click on the various photographers as per their locations and view their profiles in no time. Companies like Oneglint have extended the business model to next level by providing post processing, photo distribution, management and started talking of Journey maps for consumers by making collages seamless using Artificial intelligence, where quality photos would be picked at each and every memorable moment with personalization, to make it a memorable experience.

As consumers have slowly started experiencing the uberization effects which have become the norm, platforms have focused on providing up-sell/cross-sell value added packages and are making gift cards that could be purchased on-line or off-shelf. The flexibility and ease of getting quality photographers will help fuel more people to take photography as a career or also provide an additional source of income and thus creating a flywheel effect where more photographers and more consumers will lead to?more interactions which in turn will allow introducing more services and increased engagement on the platform.?So apps like Uber Eats could soon become part of the platform wherein, say a marathon?such as the Boston Marathon. is held in?places of importance or?would need the services of photography + food for the runners together, creating new channels of revenue. Thus network effects aka circular economy continues further.

Photography industry is now looking at NFT as a gateway to web3.0 in creating phygital (physical + digital) experiences in the world of metaverse with new experiences for the avatar that could be relished in the best of the worlds and the whole journey maps could be created as NFT and be posted in their metaverse, invite their friends and family to have long lasting experience across.

As?Satya Nadella puts it very well?“The metaverse is here, and it’s not only transforming how we see the world, but how we participate in it – from the factory floor to the meeting room.”?Photography is no different and needs to transcend into the metaverse world and?elevate experience.