Guinness World Record: Most Tagged Photo

Since 1955 Guinness World Records has annually published a book showcasing mankind’s achievements. The book indirectly perpetuates one-upmanship and the competitive spirit. Being a part of the book is a unique achievement that only a few will ever realise.

Now, though. 7,000 people will be able to say they had a hand in a world record, namely the Most Tagged Photo of All Time.

During the 2010 Glastonbury Festival, 36 hi-res photos showed over 70,000 muddy music lovers. These images were merged together to create a 1.3-gigapixel picture.

The mobile network Orange created the photograph and encouraged people to tag themselves in it. Now 7,000 people have done just this through Facebook.
The 36 photos were taken with just two Hasselblad H4D-50 cameras, which cost around £24,000, from the stage.

This was originally a promotion to get people to upload photos from their Orange mobile phones; but it has shown how far we have come since the launch of Facebook in 2004.

When the site first went up it didn’t have a tagging feature. Once this was added, it quickly made Facebook Photos a popular way of sharing images online.

It also shows how much people want to be a part of social media campaigns. However weird or mundane the promotion might be, people want to feel a sense of community.

Offline our communities are more segmented and structured that keeps us within narrow geographical restrictions. Online these walls don’t exist. You can find people on the other side of the planet that otherwise would always have been a stranger.

The sense of community can make or break a website in its early stages of development. Having a dedicated fan base helps drive more traffic to a start-up.
It is an important lesson for anyone who tries to conduct social media campaigns: ensure it brings together people with a common interest, no matter how tenuous the link.