When artists meet social networking: Saatchi Online

I missed this story in the Financial Times Magazine on 27 July 007, but our friend Tim Harrap kindly pointed it out to me and we definitely want to recognize this innovation. We've talked about the role of MySpace with music artists (what was it, 3 million bands on MySpace already?). Now there is a similar site for artists. Based in London it is Saatchi Online, brainchild of Charles Saatchi.

So what is it? A social networking site for artists, with 35,000 professional artists and another 19,000 art students already signed up. Museums and art schools of course are already also members. The aim is to let artists and their customers find each other. The professional art world is not very different from the music industry. About 50 dealers worldwide determine the success or failure of most artists today. If they don't pick you, as an artist you suffer. Yet there are more than 50 variations of taste. Now the social networking site allows a much wider range of tastes to find each other.

And the site also offers incentives to its members. One is a community rated contest for best new art every two weeks. The winner gets 1,000 UKP. Also interesting is that one of the biggest national groups getting involved with the London based service is artists from China.

We wish this online social networking experiment the best of luck. Artists, yes of course !!  Why didn't I think of this ha-ha...