Travel Bloggers and their Avatars (03) – Kevin Luke May

Travel Bloggers and their Avatars (03) – Kevin Luke May

I know. It is April Fool’s day, but I’m serious! Seriously!

Kevin blogs about traveltech and travel economics (ROI and so) and travel startups at Tnooz (to pronounce like T-News) that he co-founded.

If he would take the above photo and use it as his avatar (a thumb on social media), the ROI of his Avatar would be guaranteed zilch, zero, nada.

As an occasional hobby photographer I’m probably above average sensible for the use of an avatar with maximum ROI.

Now why did I take the above photo in the first place?

In 2010 Kevin was explaining at a blogger conference that he believed the IPhone would cause a revolution in travel. He demonstrated an APP that when you held your IPhone above your head it could recognize you and could let your social media friends know where you were. Just after I took this photo Kevin held the IPhone above his head (see the top photo) to demonstrate this.

Why refer to that today?

For several reasons:

The first is that just by coincidence someone asked me permission to use the following photo in a post about Kevin (The Awesomosity of Kevin May) which I gladly granted:

I’d used this photo in an interview with Kevin.

I’d started it with the observation “Am glad I have a photo of him where he smiles (a bit), because usually he likes to look as stern as possible” implicitly also hinting to his habit of frequently changing his rather stern Avatar. Sometimes I used to tease him with it, because it is my firm believe that one should stick to ones Avatar. If you don’t, your followers most likely will be confused. You might lose them.

When I later met him he admitted that this observation had haunted him (a bit).

The Second reason for this post just today is that Kevin posted about a startup that just does what he explains in the above photo (looking stern because he is concentrated): WhosWhereWhen promises to bring awesome productivity to travel conferences

The third reason is that coincidentally I had a short conversation yesterday with another travel blogger (and hotelier) – whose avatar I’ll shave in a separate post – whereby I referred to Kevin’s current Avatar which I find brilliant:

The reason I find it brilliant is that Kevin is an investigative Journo. The eye expresses the same that a private eye expresses: curious and serious without being too stern. He stays away from the stern in the sense of “too concentrated” like in the following photos:

You see what I mean? If you would use a photo which makes you less likable, it might turn people away from you, but if you like to keep distance and suggest you are serious, really serious, the Eye is a good way of suggesting you are serious without looking too stern. In addition the Avatar stands out in a whole page of them like the Twilk collection. Therefor I suggest Kevin to stick to The Eye for the time being.

What do you think?