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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Atlanta, GA | Posted: August 2, 2013
Joshua Preston, GVU Center
Summary Sentence:
John Saddington, BS STC 05 and creator of Pressgram, is betting the app will be a subtle but clear alternative for how people choose to share their photo creations.
Full Summary:
No summary paragraph submitted.
John Saddington, BS STC 05Pressgram looks remarkably like other mobile apps specializing in photo editing and sharing, but with an important distinction - users publish pics directly to their own websites using the app. Social media sites will still be a click away, but Pressgram - with filters and functionality that should be familiar to many users when it comes out later this month - gives content creators exclusive ownership of their photos. The free iOS app prompts its users to create a WordPress blog account, a simple process for those weaned on Facebook and Twitter. Pressgram photos can then be published on a blog with a tap of the screen, allowing owners to share pics without third parties profiting from the images.
John Saddington, BS STC 05 and creator of the app, is betting Pressgram will be a subtle but clear alternative for how people choose to share their photo creations.
“Your images can be stored on your own systems forever,” says Saddington. “This continuity of data is vitally important,” he says, “as are the implications of sharing through social networks whose agenda is strictly monetization of user content.”
A self-proclaimed rebel while in the Georgia Tech College of Computing who “didn’t want to program the way the institution told me I should,” the 2005 alum eventually earned a bachelor’s in science, technology, and culture from the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. Saddington started his path to Pressgram as a response to the current social media landscape. He was part of a small Facebook user exodus when the company acquired Instagram and made changes to the photo app’s terms of service that allowed user photos to show up in advertising content without compensating users.
“I hope people start leveraging their blogs more as the primary destination for all the activity surrounding them and their work and organization instead of giving control over to social networks that may not be around forever,” Saddington says. “[Pressgram] will create deeper and more intimate collaborative work too,” he says of his solution to photo-sharing in the digital age.
Created over the past six months in downtown Atlanta in-between his full-time job at startup 8BIT and family life, the app project was supported by a Kickstarter campaign, raising more than $56,000. When Pressgram becomes available in the App Store this month, Saddington hopes the payoff will lead to new user behaviors in social sharing and self-publishing.
“Pressgram quickly opens the door for busy people to document and share their work and allows others to encounter and engage with that work more directly and more often,” he says.
Filling the photo-sharing void started as a personal pursuit for Saddington, who adheres to a coder creed of sorts to just “build the technology if it can’t be found.” But soon, smartphone-toting photo enthusiasts everywhere may rejoice at the prospect of having their digital lives a little more secure, thanks to this programming rebel.
