The cult of Flickr

viewfromthenorth

viewfromthenorth

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Andy
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I've been half heartedly using Flickr since 2007. I've used the groups casually, some of my photos are tagged, and I follow some people, maybe a hundred or so, and that needs a cull as half of them don't posy anymore. Mainly though I use it as a place to put photos that I want to share on forums (which I do less of these days), and as image storage. I also use it as a resource for research and to get ideas.

What has surprised me recently has been a lot of new followers, and also the number of people they follow. Of the past 11, their total numbers of people followed are: 2600, 4700, 46500, 5400, 16200, 2700, 144, 67700, 61000, 1500, 81700. Not only that there was a huge discrepancy between the number of followers and number following, so they aren't necessarily reciprocal follows.

Before people jump in and say "so what, don't let it bother you" let me say that it doesn't. It was just something I noticed and got me curious as to how people can get so drawn into Flickr. Or is it me that's missing out?
 
Andy, I had had thought exactly the same. I use Flickr as a storage medium and as a way to share images with a few like minded souls. Also, it is an appropriate tool for uploading photos to TP. I have a few followers and in many cases the connection is obvious, shared interest in film based photography, similar subject interest etc. Just recently though I have gained followers with no apparent connection at all. In all cases they are people that are following quite frankly absurd numbers of others. The only thing I can think is that they are 'contact/follower collectors' labouring in the hope that their 'follow' action will be reciprocated. This is just a hypothesis though! Now't strange as folk I guess?
 
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I use Flickr as a means to an end - I follow 2 (one is Surrey Life) because I have a real interest in them, nothing more.
 
I think that sums it up. They follow hundreds or in some cases thousands in the hope they will follow them back. It's a sad life when people's priorities are how many followers, favorites, likes and comments they can get. I typically only follow people who I interact with and either share equipment interests with or subject matter that interests me.
 
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It's a bit like Facebook and LinkedIn such isn't it where they want to have as many people in their group as possible.

I follow those whose photography I like or who have a style/capture of something I am aiming for. Some I don't bother with as they are not "my thing"
 
Flickr is a massive popularity contest, especially when you get into the world of explore. Like everything in life, some people will be more popular than others and this will reflect in how many likes they will receive for a given photo.

I've often mused the idea of doing a photo swap - getting a contact of mine to post my shot and I post his/her shot, and seeing if they continue to get more likes etc than me purely because they posted it. Could be interesting.
 
Buck said:
It's a bit like Facebook and LinkedIn such isn't it where they want to have as many people in their group as possible.

I follow those whose photography I like or who have a style/capture of something I am aiming for. Some I don't bother with as they are not "my thing"
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Then I feel honoured :p

But to be fair, Me too.. Sometimes I follow people who follow me, but not all the time..
 
stumeech said:
I've often mused the idea of doing a photo swap - getting a contact of mine to post my shot and I post his/her shot, and seeing if they continue to get more likes etc than me purely because they posted it. Could be interesting.
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That would be interesting indeed but I think we know the outcome already ;)
 
Flickr. Where most people only comment to get comments, bored of that game now.
 
Yes, noticed the same thing, unusual nr of new followers with massive amounts of people followed. I think they may be people suffering from faceboookitis.
 
Digifrog said:
Flickr. Where most people only comment to get comments, bored of that game now.
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To be honest mate, very few people comment these days, people seem to just like and move on. I miss the older days of Flickr where people did interact with each other.
 
Flickr is handy for some free storage (purely as a backup) but I keep all mystuff private on there and never look at anyone else's. The 'social' aspect in hugely over-rated IMHO.
 
My name is Paul and I am a Flickrholic. Yes I know that isn't a cool thing to say, but I have to admit it. I just passed my 10th Flickr birthday as a "pro" member. I joined when it was a Canadian owned site, before Yahoo bought it. I have over 5,700 images uploaded. I have 1.6 k followers, and follow 1.8 k others. My images have had nearly four and a half million views. I check in every day, and I view through my contact's uploads religiously. I have nearly 25,000 of other people's images in my Favorites stream.

I vet new contacts before I return a follow. I have two rules.

1. If they follow something like 100,000 people, and yet have faved a petty number of other people's images, like 100, I assume perhaps wrongly, that they are egomaniacs and attention seekers. I do not return the follow. To be honest, most such Flickrites have unimaginative photostreams of their own.

2. If I simply do not like their images, I do not follow, just for the sake of it. If their imagery is such a different school, for example, if it consists of shiny, digital, heavily post processed, cliche magazine inspired images, I have to wonder, why they added me, with my fusty crusty and dusty home developed b/w snaps?

As for the reason for getting drawn into Flickr. For myself, I like the community. I know certain people look down on it as a media, but I have some cracking contacts, and I absolutely love watching their uploads. They inspire me. I love looking at their photographs. I get to exchange images with a wider range of people than I do here - different countries, continents, age groups, and backgrounds. Some more contemporary art, some more portrait, some more street. The hybrid film scene on Flickr is thriving, with old timers, born agains, hipsters, students, and Lomographers, all contributing. There are dozens of film groups there. For example, the Medium Format (film only) group.
 
Just tested you Paul. :D

I actually do like your "fusty crusty and dusty home developed b/w snaps" btw. :)
 
stumeech said:
To be honest mate, very few people comment these days, people seem to just like and move on. I miss the older days of Flickr where people did interact with each other.
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Yeah I noticed. I miss the older days too, and the 47 contacts I do have are almost entirely from those days. I'm happy enough with those Stu, yourself included. I have always used Flickr as a source of inspiration.
 
XA2inmypocket said:
My name is Paul and I am a Flickrholic. Yes I know that isn't a cool thing to say, but I have to admit it. I just passed my 10th Flickr birthday as a "pro" member. I joined when it was a Canadian owned site, before Yahoo bought it. I have over 5,700 images uploaded. I have 1.6 k followers, and follow 1.8 k others. My images have had nearly four and a half million views. I check in every day, and I view through my contact's uploads religiously. I have nearly 25,000 of other people's images in my Favorites stream.

I vet new contacts before I return a follow. I have two rules.

1. If they follow something like 100,000 people, and yet have faved a petty number of other people's images, like 100, I assume perhaps wrongly, that they are egomaniacs and attention seekers. I do not return the follow. To be honest, most such Flickrites have unimaginative photostreams of their own.

2. If I simply do not like their images, I do not follow, just for the sake of it. If their imagery is such a different school, for example, if it consists of shiny, digital, heavily post processed, cliche magazine inspired images, I have to wonder, why they added me, with my fusty crusty and dusty home developed b/w snaps?

As for the reason for getting drawn into Flickr. For myself, I like the community. I know certain people look down on it as a media, but I have some cracking contacts, and I absolutely love watching their uploads. They inspire me. I love looking at their photographs. I get to exchange images with a wider range of people than I do here - different countries, continents, age groups, and backgrounds. Some more contemporary art, some more portrait, some more street. The hybrid film scene on Flickr is thriving, with old timers, born agains, hipsters, students, and Lomographers, all contributing. There are dozens of film groups there. For example, the Medium Format (film only) group.
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Thanks for the insight:)

I barely have time to go through my 100 contacts uploads every few days or so, so I have to admire your commitment with 1600! I've no idea how many views my 2000 or so pictures have, but TBH, I also have a couple or websites which I'm more interested in than Flickr, but I guess I can see now how people get drawn in.
 
I use Flickr as a means to store and show off my work to the groups in there, friends, family and on forums etc. The issue I've found is that Flickr it's like Instagram in the sense that it's a like for like culture. Don't get me wrong there is people who use it to like your stuff for genuine reasons (I for one) but it's a false economy. It's just like 500px; it's like for like.

I understand that to get your following and likes etc there needs to be some kind of "marketing" but I'm on the belief that if my work is good enough then the people who truly appreciate it will like it and comment and won't do so just because I've liked one of their photos in a group or the fact they're looking to increase their fan-base.
 
XA2inmypocket said:
I vet new contacts before I return a follow. I have two rules.

1. If they follow something like 100,000 people, and yet have faved a petty number of other people's images, like 100, I assume perhaps wrongly, that they are egomaniacs and attention seekers. I do not return the follow. To be honest, most such Flickrites have unimaginative photostreams of their own.

2. If I simply do not like their images, I do not follow, just for the sake of it. If their imagery is such a different school, for example, if it consists of shiny, digital, heavily post processed, cliche magazine inspired images, I have to wonder, why they added me, with my fusty crusty and dusty home developed b/w snaps?
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You forgot one.....

3. If they have no photos to share & if all their favourites are naked/scantily clad females then that equals the block button :)
 
viewfromthenorth said:
I've been half heartedly using Flickr since 2007. I've used the groups casually, some of my photos are tagged, and I follow some people, maybe a hundred or so, and that needs a cull as half of them don't posy anymore. Mainly though I use it as a place to put photos that I want to share on forums (which I do less of these days), and as image storage. I also use it as a resource for research and to get ideas.

What has surprised me recently has been a lot of new followers, and also the number of people they follow. Of the past 11, their total numbers of people followed are: 2600, 4700, 46500, 5400, 16200, 2700, 144, 67700, 61000, 1500, 81700. Not only that there was a huge discrepancy between the number of followers and number following, so they aren't necessarily reciprocal follows.

Before people jump in and say "so what, don't let it bother you" let me say that it doesn't. It was just something I noticed and got me curious as to how people can get so drawn into Flickr. Or is it me that's missing out?
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I noticed that too. Primarily joining Flickr for the same reasons as yourself, when someone did follow me, I'd follow them back (out of courtesy) - but they'd never "like" my images and they would have thousands of followers but be followers of just a few hundred. (roughly 10% of the amount following them) - then looking at a few of them, only a dozen or maybe 20 images, all with the 99+ likes - so I think its people just fishing for likes, if you dont "add" to their count of likes, they un-follow you. Not sure what the point is - perhaps just to get noticed?
 
whats this flickr hivemind thing? Ive noticed links coming in from there into my photostream. It just seems like some crappy website trying to hoover up all the images off flickr for whatever reason.
 
I find flickr really useful as a medium to share photos of events and 'things' with family and friends only as all my photos are private as are the majority of theirs. For this it's a really useful medium but I rarely use it for anything else or browse other content.
 
I mainly use it to store and share the images that I'm happiest with for my pleasure, to share them with family and friends or on here.

If someone I don't know follows me I'll take a look at there images, if they're regularly posting images on a subject I'm interested in and/or I find their images generally inspirational I'll follow them. I choose to be selective because I want my feed to stay limited and want to see a small quantity of inspirational images. That's just the way I've chosen to use it.

I don't fave people's photos unless I really like them, I find them inspirational and/or I want them to remind me to try something similar at some point. I'd rather people did the same to mine but as I've only owned a DSLR for 16 months I don't expect many people to do that.

I'll normally check out people who fave my images. If they're posting images on a similar subject to mine I'll admit I get a kick out of it. Most will be people posting images in a completely different field and many will be in a completely different league to mine. I do then find this a little disappointing as it suggests they're not really interested in my images, however if that's the way they want to use flickr I don't have a problem with them and to some extent can under stand it.

I have to admit I am finding myself increasingly drawn to Flickr and watching my view numbers rise.

I guess for people who seemingly follow thousands or random people it might be one of many ways of driving interest in their images for commercial benefit or it might just be as simple as it being a challenge to get as many views or favourites as possible. If it's just the challenge then if, like many other 'seemingly' pointless challenges, it makes people happy perhaps it isn't pointless. Unless you're using photography to make a living is it ultimately that different to issuing and chasing faves on Flickr? More complicated and involved perhaps, but as an interest is it fundamentally that different. It's an interest that makes some people happy, like collecting stamps, wasting hours cycling miles every week (a personal favourite) or watching sports. I don't expect every one I know to get my new found interest in photography or my addiction to cycling and I'm not interested in watching football for example but I can understand how people just get drawn into things.
 
I only use Flickr as a dump for photos. That includes mundane things like shopping lists to send to my wife!

Recently, like in the last two months,Ive had about 50 new followers.. Completely random. I never comment or like other people's photos, or expect people to do so on mine.
 
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