Monday, May 29, 2006

What's Interestingness worth?



This morning I checked my Flickr feed to discover that all of a sudden one of my photos received 12 'Favourites' in a mere few hours. I've since discovered that it is the "Most Interesting" photo for May 29th, 2005 - which is pretty amazing. Interestingness is a Flickr algorithm to determine not a photos pure popularity, but also the number of comments and other things (it's a secret) to determine 'interestingness'.

In addition to the obvious ego benefit, this has given me a chance to examine the statistics at the end of the day, and discover - what exactly is interestingness worth? How many views, how many favourites, how many new contacts?

This has also led me to the Flickr toy Scout. I can now see where my photos are on the 'Interestingness' ladder for various days. It's amazing to see that (with one single exception) photos Flickr considers 'interesting' are also photos I have chosen by hand to be part of my selection of prints for sale.

1 comment:

happily married said...

That photo was one of my favorites too. I am just not sure if that was the first photo I saw from Flickr's Interestingness that led me to your photos.