Open letter to Flickr
Dear Flickr,
I love your site, and used to be totally addicted to it. I do check you out on a regular basis still, but lately you have started to kind of bug me.
You have this really cool feature called EXPLORE/INTERESTINGNESS, and it is a page full of the most popular photos on your site. What I don't understand is how these photos are selected? The selected photos are usually incredible works of art, but every so often I see something like THIS on the Interestingness Page and I wonder, how is it that shots like these make it into the Explore stream?
What are the guidelines - if any - to have your photos show up on Explore? I have had only a handful show up, yet I looked at someone else's photostream and see they have 20-30 pictures in Explore. And their photos are not any good, IMO.
I used to try so hard to get my photos in Explore, adding numerous tags, submitting them to various groups. but it never seemed to work, so I quit trying. Now I just post pictures for my friends and contact to enjoy.
Forgive me if I sound jealous, I am not. I just want to know makes a photo worthy of being on the Explore page? I see no pattern in number of views, comments or favorites, so I am stumped.
Anyway, just wanted to tell you my current wonderings about your lovely site. Hopefully I will hear back from you soon, or see some of my photos on Explore.
Sincerely,
-Slinger5
3 comments:
Hey there! I haven't yet checked out the interestingness thing, but I've heard about it. I just started using TypePad and I really like it. You can do a little more with it than you can with Blogger. No need to apologize about the game....my husband was the one having the after game depression, not me! lol
I have wondered the same thing. I found some guys sight that gives a little insight into the 'interestingness'. Something to do with the number of different places people link through to see the picture, the tags, the groups, the number of comments, number of favorites, etc. But, I'm with you...I have seen some pretty lame pictures in explore and can't help but wonder if it isn't all generated by a group of people rather than an 'algorithm' as they claim. I'm glad you have quit worrying about it...I think you have some damn interesting photos, I'm not the powers that be, but hopefully it counts for something. :)
EVERYONE wonders about Explore. I have some of the most random, bizarre photos that have made it on there - none of which qualify as "interesting".
Someone actually sent me their legal terms to their patented "Interestingness" feature which explains how it works .... but it's so technical and legal, it barely makes any sense.
Much of what nanette said is said in the legal terms - also, how many clicks a photo gets in how short a period of time is taken into consideration, too.
So, I put it to the test and went to Explore.
I clicked on a mediocre picture of a little girl playing a recorder. photo was in BW and the recorder was multi-colored. A decent shot. Somewhat interesting. Not particularly spectacular, but still decent. So? I click on it.
50 views. Marked as a favorite 1 time. And in 2 groups.
And it was on the first page of Explore.
So clearly, their legal terms mean nothing.
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