You know I’m a big fan of Flickr. The online photo community has, for me, been fun, useful, amusing, educational and immensely interactive. Flickr helped popularize the whole concept of folksonomy tagging. And their secret formula for calculating ‘interestingness’ has an uncanny knack for surfacing truly amazing photos.
What exactly is interestingness? Well, it’s a method of calculating which photos are the most interesting, using information such as the tags used to describe the photo, how many times it’s been viewed, how many comments it’s received, the age of the photo, how many times it’s been saved as a favorite, and by whom — and probably a few other factors. The combination yields delightful results. Whereas Google’s image search reveals what you expect (the mediocre stuff), Flickr’s interestingness factor delivers the exceptional. Tim O’Reilly recently described a perfect example of Flickr’s interestingness in action.
The beauty of interestingness, as explained by Yahoo!’s own Bradley Horowitz, is that it exponentially expands the pool of participation within a community. People participate in the process of establishing interestingness without necessarily doing anything. Which is exactly what community builders want; a way to get the lurkers and the consumers to share their knowledge and insights.
Ok, so interestingness is a good thing, right? Well, now Yahoo has filed a patent application on interestingness. Now I can understand that Yahoo! wants to protect their secret sauce, but isn’t that really limited to the weight factor they give each variable in their interestingness equation? If they are awarded the patent, does this mean I can’t take usage metrics to derive results in other arenas, like serving up the most interesting/salient/relevant knowledge? And really, is the concept of relevancy (however it’s defined) really new?
I love Flickr, and I like Yahoo! But this patent is too broad and filled with “uninterestingness.” Let’s hope it dies quietly.
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November 10th, 2006 at 1:14 am
I love to explore flickr. One thing that has always surprised me is that the photo they have as my most interesting, has only been viewed 40 times, has no comments, no tags, and no notes. And is an early shot I took when I first started on my photography journey. It’s bland and I am not exactly proud of it now.
Yet I have some with many comments, one was viewed over 800 times! But is listed as about 5 on my most interesting list, I have always found this odd.
However, I do look at the section ‘most interesting’ on flickr quite often. Due to that I have found some amazing photo’s which give me inspiration and ideas for me to expand on my hobby.
Yesterday at work, I was talking to a girl that is currently working with me from Kenya. She wanted to show me places of interest there. She immediately went to google images. I took her to my desk and did a search on flickr for the same places. I think her jaw dropped to the floor, she said she would never use google images again. Don’t you just love flickr! :0)
November 10th, 2006 at 1:35 am
Thanks for the comment, Sarah. The secret behind Flickr’s interestingness formula is an interesting one. It’s not as simple as you might think. Yes, comments, views and those other metrics are all factored in, but other things also influence that.
And I agree… Flickr rocks!
November 11th, 2006 at 2:21 pm
I have seen some excellent photos at Flickr.
For those who don’t want to get lost in a crowd however, there is this cute site called Unique Exposures…. It’s small and intimate.
http://www.uniqueexposures.com/gallery
November 12th, 2006 at 12:34 am
@Xerraire - I will second that opinion… Unique Exposures is a very nice photo community.
November 14th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
Hi..
i am sorry if my English is not good ..
but i just want to tell you that your photos is so good ..it’s amazing photos
..really l spend 2 houres just to see it all …
i like it alot.. i wish you good luck.. ..
Al Ain ,UAE,
November 14th, 2006 at 11:25 pm
Thank you, RoseUAE.
November 22nd, 2006 at 1:34 am
yeah, I’ve come across fantastic flickr pix… via images.goo.
flickr searches are very slow, and most of the results are weak. also they can’t manage to organize their pages to differentiate between tags, tags thisflickrer, or search all flickr. the links runtogetherlookingtoosimilartoeachother. oh, yeah, then they also have the tag “groups”. that’s 4 types of resultsthatruntogether. you find yourself looking thru the same tns after trying to wring out something different.
November 29th, 2006 at 9:50 am
Just came across your blog from Flickr.
The “baloon”story is very good. And tells a lots. Thanks for sharing both photos and stories.