Epiphany....

I'm on a mission to reach Flickr's Explore. This is a portfolio of the top 500 shots uploaded to Flickr each day. There are something like 5000+ uploads a minute but only 500 make it into explore each day. It's an honour to have your shot chosen.

The exact algorythm they use to reflect "interestingness" is highly secret but it's common knowlege that it's based on number of views, faves, comments etc so having a lot of people looking at your shot and leaving comments and faving it is good, as is the speed with which it gernates those views/comments/faves.... but. You can't go pimping your shot to many many groups, spreading your next wide... as this goes against the interestingness rating. Keeping it to 5, certainly less than `0 groups is supposed to help.

Over the last week I've consistently been doing unto others as I would have them do unto me. I've been visiting more contacts home pages, commenting and faving their stuff.. but still only stuff that I truly like and I've been getting the same in return. more comments, more faves, more contact requests and a lot more views. My views have gone from an average of < 75/day to over 200 for the last 6 days with some simple yet seemingly effective behaviour changes on my part.

Next I need a stonking great photo at the top of my stream and then go faving, commenting a lot of other people's photos. I'll only post it to a few of my best groups that I know gives me a lot of views (probably strobist).. and we'll see how we go !!

April Fool..... unfortunately.

April Fool..... unfortunately.
Originally uploaded by Mark1970Vintage

So I got well and truly April fooled today. I usually visit Flickr in the morning to check out the Explore section (it's a great way of seeing some great photos and getting inspiration for my own shots) Every single shot on the first 5 pages was either rainbows or pandas !! What the .... ??

I thought nothing of it but when I checked back a few hours later it was still all pandas and rainbows. I left a few comments to that effect (there were still some great shots) and then based on another comment above mine I twigged !! It's an April fool. Flickr uses an algorythm (affectionaltely called the "magic donkey" to define interestingness and choose 500 photos it rates as the best (most interesting) to put on explore. Getting on Explore is a real honour as there are only 500 each day and flickr has something like 5000 uploads a second !!

The second part of the April fool was from "Big Huge Labs" and their flickrscout application. This is a tool whereby you can search for your own photos and find if they have been or are currently in "explore". Scout had been set up to show all of your photos... making it look like all of your stream had made it into explore.

I couldn't resist making a Poster of this. If only it were true though !!

In reality only 2 of my shots have made it into explore.. although obviously I thinkl I deserve more.