This year’s Christmas stocking essential, how the ‘selfie stick’ is set to storm Britain

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/14/selfie-sticks-christmas-stocking-essential

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There was a time when most of us didn’t see our Christmas “happy family” photographs until the summer, having finally finished the film and taken it to be developed at Boots. No longer. The selfie stick which allows photographers to extend their camera phone to a metre in length for group shots, along with the instantaneous nature of social media, means we can view our snaps the minute we take them.

Selfie sticks are set to fill many a Christmas stocking this year. The idea of using an extendable pole with a grip device on the end to securely hold a smartphone originated among snowboarders and extreme sports aficionados who wanted to capture pictures of themselves in action. It soon caught on in Asia, where they became popular for taking group shots of family and friends, and for taking selfies in tourist spots because more of the attraction could be seen in the frame. They are also popular at gigs with better pictures of the band obtained by holding the phone above the crowd.

It was in Asia that British entrepreneurs Neil Harvey and Steve Pengelly discovered them, leading to formation of their own selfie stick company Selfie Pods, based in Plymouth, this summer. “We were at a schoolfriend’s wedding in Manila and while we were there we saw hundreds of people attaching their phones to these sticks and taking selfies,” Harvey says. “When we first saw the selfie sticks we did think ‘that’s a bit weird’, then we realised there was a gap in the market for something like this.”

The pair produce five versions of the sticks: a basic one (costing £7.99) is a simple extendable pole, meaning the selfie-taker sets the phone timer to take a picture, and a variety of advanced versions (from £14.99) which have Bluetooth shutter releases on the handles.

Harvey and Pengelly claim to not take their business too seriously, but they have sold 6,000 pods between August and the end of November, with another 5,000 ordered to cope with Christmas demand. There is a proliferation of selfie sticks available online too, with Amazon selling more than 2,100 of them costing as little as £2.99.

Like a million others, my Facebook picture is a selfie. It’s the only one I’ve ever taken because I think they’re a bit embarrassing. Manufacturers claim the selfie stick is different, less about taking a solo picture of yourself and more about the group shot. I duly ordered my own selfie stick and took to the streets of London. My first port of call was Buckingham Palace, where I met Matt and Emma, sightseeing for the day. They’ve had a selfie stick for two weeks. Not 10 seconds after I finish talking to them, another family up-periscope their own selfie stick. In a five-minute window, I witness 10 people with the contraption.

I hotfoot it to Westminster bridge, eager to see how many people will be using their selfie sticks at the houses of parliament. I am not disappointed. Three big groups of Asian students are using them. Then two German girls, an American family … all within metres of each other. I did, however, nearly take a woman’s eye out when I was extending my selfie stick. It constantly got in the way of people, but it is a good way of getting some space in a crowd.

This month South Korea banned the use of “unregulated” selfie sticks because it decided their use of Bluetooth makes them “telecommunications devices” which must be tested and registered in case they interfere with other gadgets.

Harvey says criticism of the gadget dissipates once people start using it. “Lots of people think ‘what is the point of this’, but once you’ve had a go on one and seen the cool pictures you can produce without the need for a cameraperson, you realise that these little things are really quite a cool bit of kit.” That is, until your phone starts ringing when it’s in the clamp. Trying to answer it while it’s stuck at the end of a long pole looked like a modern-day Dom Joly sketch.