Nikonians

Business type

Open Business

Service/product description

Since their inception 10 years ago Nikonians have used open business principles to prosper in a crowded and competitive online market. They were founded in April 2000 by two online friends with a passion for photography and a desire for a cooperative, mutually supportive online community and top-tier reference site focusing on Nikon equipment. Their mission is to provide a friendly, creative and inspiring atmosphere for ambitious photographers of all skill levels and demanding imaging professionals. Members and visitors can improve their photography skills and results while making long lasting friendships across borders and continents. The Nikonians site has over 120, very active discussion forums with several thousand postings per day. We also provides blogs, newsfeeds, podcasts (mp3 radio) with weekly talk radio and interviews with famous photographers, product reviews, user stories, newsletters, electronic magazines (ezine), books, user galleries and workshops in many cities. We offer a multi channel community for all photographers in the world. Even though the Nikonians ARE Nikon lovers, they are NOT affiliated with Nikon Corp in any way.

What does 'openness' mean in this case?

As a not for profit community all revenue is invested back into the business. In response to suggestions and requests from the community, content and software is developed and added regularly. It is then provided free to community members and a process of creative evolution occurs where further improvements are suggested and acted upon. An example of this is “Nikonians Annotate. Three reasons a photographer may come to communities are getting feedback, discussing pictures, and increasing skills. To aid this Nikonians have created Annotate. A user friendly application to crop, make annotations, make image embedded wordings and easily upload and download to galleries. This software is provided by Nikonians for free. Also the new Nikonians “Good Locations” iPhone app where photographer share their best photo locations all over the world is for free. It´s another great software which has been build according to the communities motto of “Share Learn and Inspire”. Via the Nikonians Website and the iPhone Photographers can recommend, search or simply show the best spots to shoot. Following community feedback features are added and the updated application is provided again to the community for consideration. Anybody can download and use it either for Nikonians, another community or something totally different. This collaborative process is used in the development of a suite of software including social networking/web 2.0 tools and IPhone apps. Articles and Reviews are free of charge. So any interested photographer can get hands-on reviews about various products. Nikonians also provides a complete list of guides and other editorials. If they like the community and appreciate the resources it provides, new members are expected to become contributing paying members to help support and sustain the growth of the community. Running successfully for 10 years Nikonians shows it is possible to build a business around an open community. With over 10 million page-views per month and 58 000 unique visitors daily, Nikonians is the largest site for Nikon users in the world.