Like many others, I was saddened to hear about the closure of JPG, the “crowd-sourced” photography mag that started in 2004 and became a real Web 2.0 success story. I confess that I never actually saw a physical issue of the magazine, but I thought the concept had a lot of merit: a collection of the best photos submitted by a community of passionate photographers, voted on by the community and then printed and published. Printing and distributing a high-quality magazine costs a lot of money, however, and it seems JPG couldn’t quite find the business model that would make that part of the organization work.<\/p>\n
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On the first day of the new year, the magazine — backed by a consortium involving former CNET exec Halsey Minor — announced that it was folding<\/a> due to a lack of funds. For many, this was the second in a series of tragedies for JPG, with the first being the ousting<\/a> of founders Derek Powazek and Heather Champ in May of last year, after what appeared to be a falling-out<\/a> with Minor and other backers. Many people cancelled<\/a> their JPG accounts as a result, in solidarity with Powazek and Champ, and it’s possible that the friction and stresses that event put on the JPG community helped contribute to its current problems.<\/p>\n On a more hopeful note, there are signs that JPG could potentially be resurrected. As Mike Arrington notes at TechCrunch<\/a>, there has been an expression of interest<\/a> from SmugMug CEO Don McAskill, and a post<\/a> at the JPG blog says that discussions are underway with a number of interested parties. I hope they can come to some kind of agreement, because the concept behind the magazine makes a lot of sense to me, and seems like a natural fit with an existing community like SmugMug’s.<\/p>\n