Webometric Thoughts: Average photos per Flickr Member: ZERO
Webometric Thoughts blogs that based on a random sample of 324 Flickr users that 216, or 67%, had zero photos.
If this is true that would leave you to believe that more people may be consuming photos on Flickr than publishing photos on Flickr.
From Webometric Thoughts:
“67% of Flickr members have no photos! Whilst Lotka’s law teaches us that the majority of contributors to a community make very few contributions, I was still surprised at the number of members with no photos; after all, I am not talking visitors to the site, but those who have taken the trouble to join. What is the point of joining Flickr if you are not going to put photos on the site?”
Two things that this survey doesn’t really address though.
1. Just because someone’s stream shows no photos doesn’t mean that they really have not uploaded any photos to the site. Some people will have 100% of their photos marked as “private” for friends and family only. For someone who is not their contact it will merely look like they have no photos on the site.
2. A lot of people sign up for things and then never use them. I’ve signed up for hundreds of sites in the past that I never used. Sometimes I sign up to try them out and then get frustrated when sites are not intuitive and I bail, other times I just simply lose interest.
In either case I’m not sure that all users are necessarily good representative sample for all active users.
And some people will join solely to access someone else’s private photos.
I totally agree. I was going through my flickr contacts the other day and found lots of friends and family members that just signed up to see my photos. Or I signed them up and showed them how to upload photos and they never got around to it after I left. I also count myself as a person that is signed up for every cool sounding site on the net. 5% actually end up being useful.
A conclusion based on 324 flickr users is not exactly an amount to build conclusions on.
A conclusion based on 324 flickr users is not exactly an amount to build conclusions on.
For a site that has millions of members, 324 is a pretty small sample size.
Yeah that whole study is bogus it seems to me. Though flickr has seemed to be less fun for me now that it has become so big. With Yahoo on the ropes I don’t want to rely on it long term to house my photos.
While I will continue to use flickr, mainly for the community there, I have decided that Smug Mug will be my main photo site. I will cross post photos to flickr I want my friends in the community there to see, but not majority of my images.
324 doesn’t sound that small. If the sample were scientifically created, wouldn’t that give a 10% margin of error or so?
And for the record, I’m one of the 67% of users without any photos posted. I only have an account to view other people’s private photos.
Also don’t forget about being able to favorite photos. That in itself is a great reason for me to sign up and I’m sure it was for others.
bad sample size. Gave a good idea to me though, I’ll grab a larger sample size and run a more thorough analysis soon.