We are "social media nomads", not like those who are travelling around the world and keeping their personal blog or vlog about it, but folks who try to survive in the jungle of social media services. We try to find best and cheapest place to share our creativity and hunger for inspiration. And what makes us as nomads is the fact that nothing seems to continue forever, especially not the social media services.

Who remembers such communities as Multiply and My Opera? Who will soon remember Panoramio?

I came here from a community where active photographers had only handful of groups focused on photography, and there I was a member only on two groups at best times. That community was now closed My Opera community: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Opera

I arrived here with few of my friends in December 2013, hoping to get our 'Shoot & Tell' group continued here. It soon turned out Ipernity community is very different from what My Opera was. New members were "headhunted" to myriads of groups almost savagely.

Around the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014 there also was that great "SPAM war" going on at Ipernity. Some people were actively keeping noise about "reward groups", where group admins and mods were posting even very large icons on comments to acknowledge their members for contributing on their groups. And I say I still agree that those "award groups" indeed were spamming, and still are. I suggested to my fellow 'Shoot & Tell' group admins to keep very low profile, to avoid any such conflicts.

As a result, most of my old friends either stopped using Ipernity and this group, or at least we all stopped using 'Shoot & Tell' actively. I guess this is because hardly no-one here at Ipernity seemed to respect any of the group rules. People just seem to join without much acknowledging the possible group rules, and just start contributing. And I admit becoming very similar.

I think this is sort of "groups too easy to use syndrome". And this is maybe because it is even too easy to establish groups on any possible subject. Everyone wants to have a group of their own and come up with something "original". There are groups for cats, groups for red, groups for matchboxes etc. There is of course nothing wrong about that, but it eventually has turned into a situation where for example I'm (or was) a member on more groups than I could count. And definitely I no longer remember what are the possible rules on all of those groups without checking them again when considering to contribute.

The point is that in the future I personally should become more careful on deciding onto what groups I want to join and be a member. Although, such a behavior can easily turn against myself, because in a community like this Ipernity is, one soon may get a bad reputation if one does not join to each suggested group. People easily may start to judge the person based on what group s/he belongs to, or at least ask why their group is not good enough for some particular users.

But that's life! =) We have to choose sides, even when we don't want to. If one does not do that her/himself, then others do that for her/him.

Update December 1, 2017: I have limited my group membership to less than 30 groups, and today closed also the Shoot & Tell group mentioned above, because it also turned out totally inactive.

Update March 25, 2018: The current plan is to keep the number of groups below 20. Especially the more specific is the group topic, the less likely I have anything to post on such group or time to visit and see what others have posted on that topic.

Update December 10, 2020: Number of group involvement increase little. But that is because voluntary work for ipernity has required to do so. But in general, less groups where I have no time to visit.