What’s up with Flickr groups?
Jan 7th, 2009 by handolio
I’m none too convinced by social networking, but I’m a happy advocate of Flickr and Last.FM, both of which are built around something I care about. Even there, though, people are sometimes unfathomable.
Take this picture of Toyota’s iQ climbing a wall in Paris. It’s good enough that we used it in a blog post about the car, but it isn’t the only shot I’ve seen of the same scene, and it’s hardly breathtaking.
Yet in two days it’s been viewed 197 times, favourited 16 times and has received 123 comments – roughly two for every three people who saw it. Many commenters have bagged it for various Flickr groups with the usual gushingly sycophantic invite: “Wonderful find. Absolutely The Perfect Photographer…You Deserve Another Perfect Photographer Award!!!” etc.
I’m not the only one who finds that kind of invite embarassingly insincere, am I? Some Flickr groups have collections of amazing images, and many showcase active and talented communities, but I wonder about the ones that put this kind of spam into people’s photo comments and I’m dubious about their invite criteria. The iQ photo (of a car, indoors) has been invited to ‘Nature Photos HP’, for example.
The only invite I’ve had was for what I think is the weakest of a similar set. It’s been viewed just once, by the person who invited it, who didn’t bother looking at any of the similar ones I posted at the same time.
So I reckon something’s up with these groups, but I’m not sure what it is. Flickr doesn’t pass on authority with links, so it’s not a crude SEO trick. Anyone got any ideas, or am I just a little too cynical?
It is odd, and in the past I’ve wondered whether this is connected to the mysterious Flickr “interestingness” system. Flickr doesn’t explain how it calculates the “interestingness” of a given photo, but it seems to have something to do with comments, groups and photos that are related/linked to the photo in question*. With that in mind I suspect that spamming invites everywhere for a pointless group helps to increase the network of “links” made for photos, thus pushing up their ranking – and having a high interestingness can bring hundreds of views. Or, to put it another way, Flickr-SEO.
As an example of interestingness-related oddness, this is the only photo of mine that’s ever stayed in the Interestingness-ranked “explore” queue for a long period. You’ll notice that it’s a piece of crap, taken purely to aid my memory when later writing a review of the camera:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomroyal/2168822100/
.. but it’s still there now, and has attracted more views and comments than just about any other picture I’ve ever taken. Bizarre.
* Interestingness also seems to favour macro photos of objects sitting on oak-veneered Ikea desks. Seriously.
I’d like to join you in the “something’s going on, but what?” camp, please.
One of my photos – one my more boring ones at that – was almost instantaneously invited to a group, seconds after it was put up. So either someone was – by chance – flicking through my photos and immediately invited it, or there’s some kind of tricksy automatic thing going on.
The real question is why? You can’t make money off Flickr with your photos (normally), so are people just doing it for the sake of feeling good about how big their groups are, or what? The more I think about the more opaque the Flickr community seems.
Actually it’s making my head hurt. WTF is going on?
You fine gentlemen aren’t the only people puzzling about the way some pictures on Flickr seem to be popular and have comments left for reasons that are tricky to put your finger on. However this chap seems to be turning it into a sport!
http://www.penmachine.com/2009/01/too-many-dslrs
I started posting those camera collages out of my own interest, and later noticed that they out-viewed almost all my other pics on Flickr combined, I think because they tweak people’s gearhead instincts, and give them something to argue about. So now it’s a combination of my own interest and sport to see what happens when I put up a new one.
I’ve also noticed that a surprising number of my “most interesting” pictures are those I’ve republished from somewhere else in order to post them on my blog:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/penmachine/sets/72157607309578901/
Very few are what I’d consider my own well composed and beautiful photos. Take that as you will.
@Tom – I’m not sure Flickr’s ever decided one of my photos is interesting. Forgive the n00b question, but how do you tell? You might be onto something about macro photos. This is my most popular picture.
I dunno why.
@Derek – see what you mean. The repost of the Deathstar pumpkin may have had 3,000+ views, but Strongbad gets my vote:
You’ve used your pumpkin-carving powers for the awesome
You can see which photos have been rated as “interesting” using this thingy:
http://snipurl.com/9ogxg
I’ve had five photos included, not one of which I’d ever even vaguely consider interesting or good. Flickr clearly likes cameras on desks.
It’s as I thought: Flickr never loved me.