Category: Flickr

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DeleteMe Uncensored

DeleteMe Uncensored

Earlier today, the only group where I am really active on Flickr DMU was sabotaged when one of it’s administrators made everyone an administrator in the group.

This was done after an argument between admins over the nature of what an uncensored group on Flickr ought to be about. Some of the admins in the group wanted to begin censoring it.

DeleteMe Uncensored was the first uncensored group on Flickr. The idea was to play the game of DeleteMe (where people vote on photographs giving photos either a vote of "save" or "delete"). In that game if you get your photo saved 10x before you get it deleted 10x it goes into a special collection of images.

The catch though is that the game would also be uncensored. Uncensored meant that people can and will say ruthless things when critiquing your photograph that is submitted. Uncensored also meant that people can say anything they want in the threads of the group. Even very, very unpopular things.

An uncensored group is not for everyone on Flickr. Some people do not want harsh criticism on their photos and some people do not want to take part in a forum where people swear and sometimes say truly offensive things. It is not for the thinned skin. On the other hand some of the best political discussions, some of the best fine art discussions, some of the best discussions concerning the news of the day or just random mischef and mayhem took place in that group.

Today I started a new DeleteMe Uncensored group. This was done in order to replace the old group which had been deleted.

I’d like to invite you to join the new group. This new group will be where I spend the vast majority of my group time on Flickr. Be warned that this group is an 18+ group. That means that if you want in you will need to ensure that your account on Flickr has been set to allow you to see restricted content.

Hopefully over the course of the next week this new group will fill in and pick up where the old group left off.

You can join the new group here if you’d like to participate.

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Flickr User Asks Flickr to Check if Her Self Moderated Account is OK, Flickr Responds By Deleting the User’s Account Without Warning

Flickr User Asks Flickr to Check if Her Self Moderated Account is OK, Flickr Responds By Deleting the User's Account Without Warning

Last week I blogged about a Flickr user Shéhérazade who without warning saw her self moderated account get permanently deleted. The user was upset about this because they thought that they were abiding by all of the Flickr rules and posted a thread on this in the Flickr Help Forum which was promptly censored and shut down there. A lot of people felt that this was not right.

This week we have another Flickr user who was concerned that her account might not be set up right and so she wrote to Flickr staff asking if they could review her account and provide her input regarding if she had set her account up correctly or not.

Flickr’s response? Rather than respond back to the user and/or direct her on what she might need to do to have her account structured correctly at Flickr, simply without warning just pressed the big fat red delete button wiping out her entire account and all of her content permanently.

From the deleted account:

“I had an adult orientated stream of photos on flickr and was slowly building up a list of contacts, comments and views. All my pics were public and marked restricted except for 1 that contained no nudity and was marked moderate. My account was rated safe.

I have been deleted in the past and had done quite a bit of checking around to make sure I was on the right side of the law. It will make me sound like a bit of an anorak but I spent in excess of 4 hours on this and still was not sure. I got a flickr mail from another user (one of many) which said put all my pics f&f [edit: f&f = friends and family] or I would be deleted and this prompted even more checking and in the end I decided I would try and request flickr for help – primarily because the guidelines are so vague.

My email was nice enough. It contained the information in the first paragraph of this post and then went on to say that I did not want to get my account deleted for doing the wrong thing and that I would appreciate a review of my account to check I was all ok.”

The deleted user goes on to document her reply from Flickr:

“I got a response back within 12 hours

Subject:
[Flickr Case 1054684] Re: Account Review Request

Message:
Hello,

Flickr account “flashergirl77″ was deleted by Flickr staff
for violating our Terms of Service and Community
Guidelines.

http://www.flickr.com/guidelines.gne

Urination.

Flickr reserves the right to terminate your account without
warning at any time.

Regards,
-[edited out by staff]”

Now, Flickr tells people that they are allowed to host adult content as long as it is self moderated. Adult content, nudity, etc. is all over Flickr. The Flickr rules are that if you post that stuff you have to label it as “restricted,” this way people that don’t want to see it (and the default Flickr set up if people don’t bother to say one way or the other) won’t see it. It’s like it doesn’t exist to them.

So why when a Flickr user is playing by the rules and has self moderated all of their explicit photos “restricted,” do they summarily get their account deleted without warning simply for the crime of asking Flickr to review their account and tell them if they are doing everything ok?

Certainly Flickr owes its community more than this. It is the community after all that makes up Flickr. Flickr would be nothing without its community. And yet time and time again, over and over again, they seem to get away with deleting accounts and censoring content with no repercussion. Because Flickr seems to be the 800 pound gorilla and because today this is where the larger photo sharing community largely interacts, they seem to feel that they can just do whatever they feel like without any sort of consequence whatsoever.

And what’s sad, is maybe they’re right. Maybe they can just keep on censoring accounts and deleting accounts on a whim whenever they feel like it. Maybe they can continue destroying years of people’s work, thousands of comments, their uploaded images all without consequence because what are you going to do about it anyways?

But that still don’t make it right.

If you’d like to follow this case in the Flickr help forum you can do that here. Don’t be surprised though if the thread gets shut down shortly.

Update: Heather Champ has responded as follows in the Help Forum thread:

“I just wanted to follow up that I’ve sent an email about an hour ago to flashergirl1977 with an apology for the actions taken by the team in recent days. I’ll leave it up to them as to whether or not they want to share the content here.

That’s why I suspect this particular case is an aberration (not common, accident, etc) or there’s more to the story. The last thing Flickr wants to do is create a sense of distrust among the users. Unfortunately it’s only the cases handled improperly that end up getting any public attention (there’s no “Great Job Flickr!” forum.) and thus leads to public fear, as if that’s how all of their cases are handled.

You’ve hit the nail on the head. I’ve circled round with the team here regarding our process and policies. “

As an aside there are currently 94 threads (most of them closed or locked by Flickr) in the Flickr help forum with the words “censorship” and “mistake” in them. And yet still Flickr doesn’t have a way to undo “accidental” account deletions.

Update, not unsurprising, but Flickr has now permanently closed this thread complaining about their censorship.

Update: Bonus Feature. What to do you do when Flickr deletes your paid Pro account not once but twice?

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How Would You Feel if Your Flickr Account Were Permanently Deleted?

Watch Out, Your Flickr Account Might be Up for Deletion Next

One of the things that continuously pisses me off to no end is how capriciously and callously Flickr goes about deleting accounts with no warning. The latest example comes from Flickr user Shéhérazade. After paying for a Flickr Pro account and uploading photos to a stream on Flickr that had been visited over 150,000 times, Shéhérazade found that one day her account was in her words, “deleted without any reason or warning.” According to Shéhérazade, when she tried to contact Flickr about the problem, “Terrence” from the Flickr Censorship Bureau (FCB) told her that her account had been deleted because it included photos that had not been taken by her.

Although at first Shéhérazade had said that all of the photos in her stream were taken by her, she later admitted that 10 of the photos in her stream were not taken by her. But it turns out that, according to Shéhérazade, those 10 photos were actually of her from a model session that she participated in and she claimed that she had rights to them as the model being photographed. Now apart from whether or not Shéhérazade actually has legal rights to those photos, what pisses me off here is just that Flickr without warning continues deleting user accounts.

To make matters worse, when Flickr deletes your account it really is gone. There’s no going back. It’s permanently deleted. Gone forever. There’s no undo. There’s no, “I’m sorry we accidentally pressed the delete button.” Not only are all your photos gone, but thousands of comments left by users throughout the site are also permanently gone. Same goes for images that they delete from your account, like they’ve done to me in the past.

Anyways, so Shéhérazade gets pissed of course. You would be too if your Flickr account were deleted. So she does what anyone might do, she goes to the Flickr Help Forum to express her dissatisfaction over this and try to get some sort of response from Flickr (see screenshot above).

It should be noted that some of Shéhérazade’s photos were of a shall we say “adult” nature. But all of her photos had been correctly marked as “restricted” by her pursuant to the Flickr rules.

So her response back from Flickr? Well the only response she got back in the help forum was a rudely worded message from Flickr Community Manager Heather Champ locking the thread.

Flickr Closed Thread

Here first response she got back was:

“Apologies… I’ve been battling a cold and a little less observant that normal. This topic is way over heated. I’m going to close it for 24 hours to let people chill out. I would ask that once the topic is re-opened that we dial back the name calling and ugliness towards members and the team.”

but before the thread could be reopened, Champ then posted this follow up message:

“I’ve gone back and had the opportunity to read through the back and forth. While it might serve to continue to further the discussion, I think that attitude of the OP isn’t something that I want to give a further venue to. I think it would be better served via 1:1 Help by Email. As such, I’m closing this puppy permanently.”

Now this doesn’t really surprise me. In fact in my own thread the other day where I complained about five of my images being censored (a museum painting, a sculpture from Beverly Hills, and some screenshots critical of Flickr) that thread ended up locked as well (but at least I got Flickr to agree to uncensor 4 of my 5 censored photos).

But the point is this. Flickr should NOT be permanently deleting anyone’s account. Especially a paid account. And especially without warning. In the event that Flickr really feels that they need to delete an account, I think that they owe it to their customers to first engage in a dialog about the images. Were there images in Shéhérazade’s account that were not hers? Maybe. But maybe a perfectly reasonable explanation was that she was the model in the photos and had permission to use them.

Are there photos in your Flickrstream that are not yours? I know that I have a few photos in my stream that are not mine. For instance, this photo of me can’t possibly have been taken by me because I’m only about 6 months old and clearly was in no position to handle a camera in 1968. Should I deserve to have my Flickr account deleted without warning for this?

Shéhérazade set up a new account on Flickr and posted a single black image in protest of her account deletion a few days ago and the image already has 106 comments on the image, mostly all expressing how much they will miss her work on Flickr.

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Why Isn’t Carol Bartz, Yahoo’s New CEO, on Flickr?

Why Isn't Carol Bartz, Yahoo's New CEO, on Flickr?

I just got done listening to Yahoo’s quarterly analyst conference call. Carol Bartz, Yahoo’s new CEO, gave a rundown on what we should expect in the quarter ahead and took her first round of questions from Wall Street analysts. There will of course be plenty of financial analysis on the web about both their quarterly performance and her first analyst call as CEO, so I’m not going to get into much of that here except to say that I did think it was interesting that she mentioned “micro blogging” at one point in the call and that makes me wonder if Yahoo might be interested in buying Twitter or FriendFeed.

One of the things that I was struck by on today’s call though is that my favorite Yahoo property Flickr was not mentioned a single time, not once, nada, nilch, it’s like they didn’t even exist. Many of Yahoo’s other properties were mentioned of course, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, etc. — she even mentioned Buzz. But the word Flickr was not uttered a single time on the entire call.

Analysts asked questions about Facebook and myspace and Bartz even mentioned at one point that one of her daughters wasn’t as interested in posting pictures to Facebook any more as she was now more interested in reading Yahoo Finance etc. Posting photos on Facebook? Why not Flickr? There were many points in the call that it would have been appropriate for Bartz to mention Flickr, but she didn’t. Which to me was a bit disappointing. Especially given that Alexa rates Flickr as the 23rd most visited English internet site in the world. Certainly well ahead of almost every other property that Yahoo owns.

But then I got to thinking more. Maybe Bartz just doesn’t know about Flickr. Maybe she’s just not familiar with it. So I did a search for her on Flickr to see if I could find an account for her to add her as a friend, maybe she just needs me as her friend on Flickr. The closest thing I could come up with on Flickr for Bartz was this account. Unfortunately, if this account (screenshot above) is actually Carol’s account, well, then it’s no wonder she’s not familiar with Flickr, she doesn’t seem to use the account at all. The account has no avatar, is sharing no public photos, has no testimonials, has no contacts — heck, the account isn’t even a paid Pro account.

Now there is a chance of course that this account is not Carol’s. That it belongs to some other Carol Bartz and that she has some other sort of handle on flickr like hotmama28787, but then again maybe not.

Now I’m not suggesting that every CEO needs to “dogfood” their own company products. But as one of the most trafficked and highest profile Yahoo property, I certainly think it makes some amount of sense for her to use Flickr, or at least to have a halfway presentable account on the site. Everybody has photos right? Even if she didn’t want to share photos of her kids or her dog or things like that, she could at least share a few photos that she’s snapped of flowers or sunsets, no?

On the analyst call she talked a bit about how Yahoo’s traffic had spiked during the inauguration. What a great opportunity for her to have plugged Flickr and mention that some of the best photos of the entire event came from Flickr, Yahoo’s users. Instead she didn’t, and I think that’s too bad.

By the way, one thing that Bartz did say over and over again on today’s earnings call was that she hoped to make Yahoo successful by having a “maniacal focus on our users and their experience.” She used the words maniacal many times and it seemed to be a focus of hers. In the spirit of this maniacal focus on my own experience, I’d like to offer my own comment as a very heavy user of one of Yahoo’s top properties, Flickr (which I hope she and her daughters join and are active on the future).

Carol, if you want to focus on *my* user experience on Flickr, the best thing that you could do is to have Flickr stop censoring my images. Oh, and it would be nice if Yahoo would agree to notify users if their photos on Flickr are censored in the future. That’s all for now. Carry on with the new job as CEO and dropkicking friggin’ ass.

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Flickr and Getty Images Begin Inviting Select Flickr Photographers Into Their Joint Stock Photography Business

Flickr and Getty Images Begin Inviting Select Flickr Photographers Into Their Joint Stock Photography Business

Recently I’ve been getting reports that Flickr has begun inviting select Flickr photographers into the new joint Flickr/Getty stock photography business that Getty and Yahoo announced earlier this year in July.

I contacted both Getty and Yahoo for confirmation that invitations have been sent out and received confirmation from Kryssa Guntrum, Senior PR Manager at Yahoo, that this is indeed happening.

From Guntrum:

“The editors at Getty Images have recently sent a preliminary set of invitations to be part of the collection to a small group of Flickr members. The photos are being chosen based on Getty Images’ expertise in licensing digital content and insight into customers’ needs. As always, Flickr is committed to offering its members full control over their content and they are free to accept or decline the invitation as they so choose. We will keep you posted as more information on the invitation process and other partnership milestones are announced.”

The invitation being sent to select photographers reads like this:

“Flickr has partnered with the fabulous Getty Images to
offer an invitation-only service for Flickr members to sell
their photos for commercial use.

The Getty Images team has noticed your work on Flickr, and
is pleased to offer you an invitation to enroll with them.
They have selected XX of your photos for possible inclusion
in the program. Here are a few of them:

If you’re interested, find out how to get started at the
Flickr page below. Congratulations! And, good luck!”

I’m not sure how many photographers have been invited at this point but personally don’t feel entirely good about how this program is going so far.

Earlier this year, back in July, I blogged about this program after iStockphoto VP for Content Development, Joseph Jean Rolland Dube, made comments about how the program would work in Seattle at the Microsoft Pro Photography Summit.

Originally Dube stated that Getty would start this program with around 2,500 images. This seemed unusually small to me given the magnitude of images that Getty offers for sale. Bridgett Russell, Getty’s Senior Director of Communications, later told me that Dube had provided an erroneous number and said that the program would launch in the “coming months” with “tens of thousands” of photographs for sale.

I’m not sure how many photographs have been selected by Getty here some five months later, but I’d guess that the number is a heck of a lot closer to the 2,500 (at best) number Dube originally provided than the clarification offered by Russell of “tens of thousands.”

Personally I’ve long believed in the opportunity that stock photography represents through Flickr. There are some things that concern me about this initiative so far though.

All along I’ve worried that this Flickr/Getty deal was not a serious attempt at selling stock photography through Flickr. I’ve worried that it was more a lip service attempt by Getty to lock in a relationship with Flickr before Corbis (Getty’s largest competitor) could. Especially in light of the Microsoft offer to buy out Yahoo last summer, I wondered if Getty might try to create a contractually binding agreement with Yahoo ahead of any possible Microsoft ownership of Flickr. Although Corbis is an independent company from Microsoft, Corbis is 100% owned by Microsoft Founder Bill Gates and I wondered if a Microsoft owned Flickr might not make a deal with Corbis more likely.

Given that there has been virtually no communication about this initiative since it’s announcement by either Getty or Flickr, I’m worried that the program is not really moving along. Especially given that Flickr in their FAQ on this program states that the program would “debut later this year” (one day left, guys) and Russell told me that the service would be launched in the “coming months” with tens of thousands of photos back in July, I just don’t see “a preliminary set of invitations to be part of the collection to a small group of Flickr members,” as being very serious in nature. Especially when there has been no formal update to the Flickr FAQ on the partnership since it was announced.

What bothers me more though is the complete lack of transparency on the part of Flickr over how this program will work. More than just a bunch of random nameless faceless photographers, Flickr is a community. And an opportunity to allow Flickr users to sell their work if they want through the site is a huge deal. And yet there is no way that Flickr members can apply for consideration for this program. There is no information about the types of photos that Getty wants. There simply is no communication going on about this new service by Flickr, Yahoo or Getty. There is no reasoning given for the delays in the launch. Will, I, Thomas Hawk be able to sell stock photographs through Getty? Who knows. Will you be able to? Other than a select few photographers who received invitations on very small numbers of their photos not much else is being offered that I can tell.

Have you been approached to sell photos through Getty yet? If so feel free to post a comment and discuss your opinion of this program.

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Former Flickr Designer George Oates on Getting Fired by Yahoo!

kewlchops: Not quite what I had in mind.: “I stayed up until about 2:30am that night, chain smoking and talking to friends who saw my tweet and had responded – THANK YOU. I sent a formal request for time to transition The Commons program to whoever is to take it over: ‘A week should do it,’ I said. It was denied.

(It would be unfair to give anyone affected by the lay-offs special treatment.) It’s not just my treatment I worry about here. Such a sudden movement makes it especially hard to continue the program effectively, at least for a while. So silly. I sent a few tersely helpful emails before my email account was closed. Couldn’t resist. Don’t let The Commons die, you buggers! Can’t you see how wonderful it is?!?!?”

Pretty stupid move on Yahoo’s part in my opinion. The “Commons” actually is one of the more important things that Flickr is working on right now.

I’ve been personally shooting museums for a while now. In my own small way I think that treasures that make up our public museums belong online for the entire world to explore and enjoy. I think physical walls coming down in a way with the art moving online is a positive thing. George was looking to do something far larger. She was looking to work *with* the museums to get them to voluntarily release their images to the world on a much larger scale — and she was having success with this program.

Good luck in whatever you do next George.

More commentary here. (Note you have to be logged into Flickr and have your settings set to allow adult content to read this thread).

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Yahoo Lays Off Three Flickr Staff Members Including Designer George Oates

Flickr Kittens, George Oates and Heather Champ
Flickr Designer George Oates (left) with Community Manager Heather Champ (right).

Several news outlets/bloggers are reporting that Yahoo has laid off Flickr Designer George Oates in their recent bout of layoffs. George was an early member of the Flickr team and was the company’s first designer signing on with Flickr back before the Yahoo acquisition. She was oft credited with much of the simple and clean feel and look that went into the site’s overall design. According to the Guardian, two other Flickr team members were let go as well. I have not seen/heard who these other two individuals are yet. The entire list of Flickr staff at Yahoo is listed here. (George is still listed on this staff page at present, but I imagine that this is just an oversight and that Flickr hasn’t had a chance to remove her from this page yet).

More than just another Flickr employee, as one of the most early team members, George was part of what embodied a certain ethos on the site. Flickr’s employees have always played active roles in the community and especially the community discussions and George was very well liked by the community that makes up Flickr. There are a few threads in the Flickr Groups discussing Oates’ layoff. You can read more from the community on the issue here and here (note, on the second link you will need to be logged into Flickr and make sure that you have your Flickr settings marked to adult if you want to read it). Yahoo/Flickr has not commented as of yet on these layoffs, however, George’s personal profile page on Flickr now reads that she “used” to work at Flickr. Most recently George had been working on “The Commons” project at Flickr, actually one of the more important things that Flickr has been working on recently in my opinion.

I don’t really know George and have no idea how she feels about Microsoft, but it would be a huge coup for them to hire her. Not only is she a very talented and highly regarded designer, but assuming that Microsoft ends up with Flickr in the end (very likely) she would be a strong person to work on integrating the service into Microsoft’s other properties. She would also be another highly visible talent hire from Yahoo. Most significantly though, Microsoft has recently re-launched a photo service inside of their new social network Windows Live that desperately needs quite a bit of work.

George’s personal website is here.

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Use a Swear Word in a Private Email at Flickr and You Get Your Account Deleted

More Crappy Flickr Censorship: Use a Swear Word in a Private Email at Flickr and You Get Your Account Deleted

I was disturbed today to learn that a Flickr friend of mine Pierre Honeyman had his account deleted by Flickr. Pierre had been a long time contributor to Flickr and one of its most active users. Like me, Pierre joined Flickr over three years ago back in the days before Yahoo. He was very active (daily) in many of the groups that I was in and while occasionally a critic of censorship of Flickr, I always felt him to be a responsible contributor to the community.

Apparently the deletion all started earlier today when Pierre received the following email from Flickr Censor Cop Terrence:

“Hi phoneyman,

We’ve seen an unusual number of “blocks” against your
account.

In joining Flickr, you agreed to abide by the Terms of
Service and Community Guidelines. Specifically, you must
not abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate or intimidate
other Flickr members:

flickr.com/guidelines.gne

If we continue to see an unusual number of blocks against
your account, we will take further action that may include
termination without warning. (emphasis mine).

Regards,

Terrence”

First of all, WTF? Flickr will delete your account if too many people block you? That’s about the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard of. I’ve had plenty of people block me. Are they going to delete my account too? Most of the time I have no idea why they blocked me in the first place. Anyone can block anyone on Flickr for any reason. To assume that people blocking you means you are harassing people is absurd. I can block you because I don’t like the fact that you have blue hair or that you live in Alaska or that you post too many photos of kittens or whatever. The fact that all a bunch of people have to do is block someone to get their account deleted is ludicrous.

To make matters worse, on Flickr you don’t even *know* who is blocking you. Unless you accidentally run across their photos and find that you can’t fave or comment on them it’s a deep dark secret.

That sucks.

So Pierre did what I’d expect him to do, he fired off a sort of WTF private email back to Flickr staff. In the email he swore at them and called them morons.

Now personally I’ve never known Flickr to be a place that would delete your account for swearing. I seem to remember former Flickr Chief and Founder Stewart Butterfield using a very F sort of word in a public interview on GETV a few years back.

And certainly Heather Champ, the community manager who deleted Pierre’s account is no stranger to the F word — a snipet from her blog: “F***ing illness. I’m so f***ing sick of being sick. F***. F***. F***.” Simply run a Google search for that certain F word and her name and you’ll find she’s used it liberally plenty of other places on the internet as well.

In any event, after Pierre sent this email back to Flickr staff objecting to their threat to delete his account if more people blocked him, without warning they did exactly that. They deleted his account. No warning. No second chances. No let’s sit down and talk about this. They simply deleted his account. His photos are gone. All of the years of comments and interaction on his photos is gone. Erased. Hours and hours of work on his part over the years simply erased away for daring to object to a threat to have his account deleted for a super stupid reason in the first place.

This sucks. As a *paying* member who had put thousands of hours into the Flickr community over the past four years Pierre deserved better than this. He deserved better than to have his pictures permanently erased and all the comments, contacts, and everything else that went along with his account taken away forever. This sort of retribution by Flickr was unwarranted and uncalled for.

Flickr should reinstate Pierre’s account that they deleted and simply give him a warning not to use such charged language or obscenities with Flickr staff again.

Pierre’s response to Flickr when threatened with account deletion in full:

“Oh shove it, I’ve been active here for 3 years or more.
You guys are getting f***ing ridiculous. The whole f***ing
point of Blocks is so that people can prevent users from
communicating FOR ANY REASON OR NO REASON WHATSOEVER. And
yet you sensitive morons go and use it as a reason to
threaten otherwise upstanding members about behaviour you
have no idea about? f***ing SHOVE IT. I’m sick of your
goddamn moron threats. I am who the f*** I am and yes, I’m
always like this. I don’t harass ANYONE. If people block me
they block me, and I usually don’t even know about it. Go
ahead, you f***ing twats, go find my harassing behaviour.
These threats are beyond the pale. Grow the f*** up
Flickr.Jesus. Pierre”

If you feel Pierre should have his account reinstated digg this here.

Update: Apparently a “Fun Blockers” group was set up on Flickr that had the objective of encouraging people to block people and that group has now reportedly been shut down by Flickr staff. Silencing your critics is never a good idea whether you have the power to do so or not. What’s more the group was shut down without any warning or explanation.

You can read more on that here. (Note, Flickr has deemed the Delete Me Uncensored group “adult” despite the fact that I can’t ever remember seeing a nude photo in it ever, so it is blocked to the general public. The only way to see the thread is to sign up at Flickr, consent to viewing adult material and joining the group). More crappy censorship at Flickr.

Update #2: Derek Powazek, the husband of the person that deleted Pierre’s account, tried to defend Flickr’s decision for deleting his account on digg. I suggested that he ought to disclose the fact that he’s married to the person who deleted the account and I get called an abusive douchebag asshole and jerk by him. Question. Why can Derek call me names like that and keep his account while Pierre calls someone names and loses his. Seems like a double standard to me. Nice.

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Top 10 Tips for Getting Attention on Flickr, All Fresh and New for 2008

Top 10 Ways to Get Attention on Flickr

“What is more pleasant than the benevolent notice other people take of us, what is more agreeable than their compassionate empathy? What inspires us more than addressing ears flushed with excitement, what captivates us more than exercising our own power of fascination? What is more thrilling than an entire hall of expectant eyes, what more overwhelming than applause surging up to us? What, lastly, equals the enchantment sparked off by the delighted attention we receive from those who profoundly delight ourselves? – Attention by other people is the most irresistible of drugs. To receive it outshines receiving any other kind of income. This is why glory surpasses power and why wealth is overshadowed by prominence.”

Caterina Fake, Co-founder of Flickr, 2005.

A couple of years ago I wrote a post called Top 10 Tips for Getting Attention on Flickr that proved fairly popular. A lot has changed at Flickr in the past 2 years though and how imagery is rated and ranked on the site has also changed. That said, I thought I’d write a fresher updated post on the top 10 ways, presently, to get attention on Flickr.

Back in 2006 when I wrote my original article on how to achieve popularity on Flickr my photostream had been viewed almost 400,000 times. According to a Flickr stats page that’s been added since that time, the view count for my pages on Flickr now stands at 9,953,328. It should pass 10 million sometime this week. I’m averaging about 14,000 page views a day on Flickr.

Some of how one gets attention on Flickr has remained the same since 2006. Other stuff has changed.

1. Take great pictures. This was my number one way to achieve popularity on Flickr in 2006 and remains the number one way today. Despite all the other things that you might do to promote your photography, none of it will matter if your photos are not interesting. Everyone can be creative. Some are more creative than others. Sometimes your gear and photo processing matters, other times it doesn’t. I’ve seen incredibly beautiful and creative photos taken with a $10 toy camera. And I’ve seen incredibly beautiful and creative photos taken with a $40,000 digital Hasselblad. I’ve seen people upload interesting things from a crappy iPhone camera and I’ve seen people upload interesting things that they spent 8 hours on Photoshop with. But, the better your photos are the more likely that you will get attention. Taking great photos is a prerequisite to everything else in this article.

This said, there are certain types of photos that tend to become more popular on Flickr than others. Provocatively posed female self portraits or photos of attractive women in interesting poses, extremely saturated photos rich with eye candy like color, cityscapes, night photography, photos depicting movement and motion, silhouettes, dramatic architecture, unique portraits, creatively arranged macros and cross processed and some film photography.

2. The order that you post your photos to Flickr counts. The number one way that your photos will likely be seen in Flickr comes from your Flickr contacts looking at their Flickr contact’s photos. At present Flickr allows you to set your contacts most recent photos to their last photo, or their last 5 photos. Anything beyond 5 photos in a single batch upload will largely be buried on Flickr. If you are uploading more than 5 photos at once, make sure that you upload your best 5 photos last and what you consider your very best photo last of all. Frequently people will upload a batch of 30 photos from a concert or something with no thought as to which will be the last 5 of the 30 in order.

3. Consider places outside of Flickr to promote your photography. Do you have a blog or a photoblog? If you want more attention on Flickr you should. Flickr makes it very easy to blog your photos, you simply cut and paste the html code above your photo and you are now photoblogging with a direct link back to your photo. My blog, thomashawk.com is my number two external referrer of pageviews to my Flickrstream. Are you on FriendFeed yet? You should be. It’s easy to set up and makes sure more people see your photos. Pownce (when it is working) is another place to post interesting photos.

4. Do you have your settings on Flickr configured for maximum exposure? After Flickr itself, Google drives more traffic to my Flickrstream than any other source, even my blog. Yahoo search and both Google and Yahoo image search drive traffic as well. But your photos will be blocked from appearing in search engines unless you authorize Flickr to display your images in search engines. Make sure your photostream is set to not “hide your stuff from public searches,” here.

Same goes for the Flickr API. Lots of people are using the Flickr API in interesting ways. I get traffic from places like Flickrleech, Compfight, Technorati and lots of other places that use the Flickr API to extend your photos outside of Flickr. Make sure that you’ve authorized Flickr to allow API access to your photos here.

5. Explore. Explore still remains the number one way to get photos viewed on Flickr. Explore uses Flickr’s “Magic Donkey” algorithm to each day highlight 500 of what Flickr feels are the best photos on Flickr for that day. It’s a very popular section of the site despite the fact that everyone seems to constantly hate Explore and decry its mediocrity in selecting exceptional photos. Explore has changed and evolved a lot since it was first introduced at Flickr a few years back. Initially things like *when* you posted your photos mattered.

Whether or not Flickr chooses your photos for Explore is still very much a mystery. But there are some things that we do know. The more faves, comments, tags, etc. your photo gets, the more likely it is that it will appear in Explore. Explore also uses averaging in their algorithm now. This means that if your average photo gets 5 faves, then you’ll need to do considerably better than average if you hope to see that photo in Explore.

Photos are also constantly dropping in and out of Explore. I’ve got 157 photos in Explore at present but I’ve had 446 that have appeared in Explore at one time or another. You can check out which and how many of your photos that have been showcased by Flickr in Explore here. Just change my Flickr ID at the link above for your own.

6. Groups. Speaking of Explore, if you really want to get a particular photo in Explore consider adding it to a group that encourages tagging, faving and comments of photos. Photo critique groups are good examples of this. Some of the photo critique groups play games where tagging and commenting on a photo are part of the game. Flickr does not distinguish be
tween a photo that has been commented on or tagged organically vs. one that is included in some sort of photo critique game. If you want to boost the likelihood that your photo will be selected for Explore consider putting a strong photo into one of these pools. Photo critique groups on Flickr run the gamut from nice and friendly photo critique groups like TWIP’s, to hostile and brutal photo critique groups like DeleteMe Uncensored (note NSFW and maybe not the best group if you are easily offended).

Whatever the case, the key to groups is participation. If you simply dump a bunch of photos blindly into random groups you will likely not get much benefit. In fact, Flickr actually penalizes photo rank if someone posts their photo to too many groups. But posting your photo to selective groups where you participate will encourage activity on your photos and photostream.

7. Tag for Exploration (especially your most popular photos). Why has this photo of mine been viewed over 27,000 times on Flickr? Well in part because it shows up on the first page search results on Flickr for the search term guitar. And why does it show up in searches for the word “guitar?” Because I’ve got the photo *tagged* guitar. By tagging your photos appropriately you can ensure that more people will see them in search. Think of other ways that you can tag your photos. Are all of your photos taken in San Francisco also tagged “California?” They should be. Are all of your photos tagged “self portrait” also tagged with your name? Again, they should be.

The better you keyword and tag your photos, the more likely they will show up in searches that take place on Flickr. Even if you think that your photos will never be popular enough to rank highly in search, remember that there are other ways that Flickr users can filter search. You can search just by your contacts photos on Flickr for instance. So even if you don’t have the most popular sunset photo amongst millions on Flickr, you might have the most popular sunset photo amongst your contacts because you tagged it.

A note that I’ve seen some people on Flickr abuse tags. They will tag every photo with girl, sunset, cat, etc. Even if these things are not in their photo simply to try and trick people into getting to their photos through search. This sucks. I’m not sure what/if/how Flickr penalizes people who do this, but it’s a crappy thing to do and ruins the search experience for everyone. Tag early and often, but only tag your photos with tags that truly are accurate and descriptive.

8. Geotag. One of the more interesting ways to find photos on Flickr is through exploring photos that are geotagged on a map. When I’m going to a new place that I’m not familiar with, frequently Flickr’s “Explore the World Map,” is one of my first destinations. But of course your photos will not show up here if they are not geotagged. The best way to geotag your photos is actually at the file level before you upload them. I use Geotagger on the Mac which allows you to use Google Earth to geotag your photos. You can also download the free software program from Microsoft Pro Photo Tools to geotag photos on a PC.

Check what Flickr considers your most popular photos and make sure that you geotag (and more descriptively tag) these photos especially — even if you have to geotag these shots on Flickr using their tools. Geotagging has been documented by Flickr staff as increasing the Flickr “interestingness” rating of a photograph.

9. Consider creating a few “best of” sets and feature them prominently on your Flickrstream. Frequently when people first discover your photostream they don’t have time to check out your entire stream. But if you make it easier for them and create a few sets that highlight some of your best work they may stick around longer. I’ve created two such sets myself. My 10 faves or more set and my 25 faves or more set. These sets highlight what are some of my best work according to the Flickr community and are my two most visited sets on Flickr. As my photos are faved 10 or 25 times I add the tag fav10 or fav25 to these sets and then use SmartSetr to automatically generate these sets.

Make sure also that you change your Flickr page layout from the boring default one to one that highlights your collections and sets better.

10. Tell everyone you know about your Flickrstream. Are you active on other social networks? Is a link to your Flickrstream prominently displayed on your blog? On your Facebook profile page? Be sure to include a link to your Flickrstream in every profile that you are on with other sites. Consider buying Moo cards (even though Moo.com has been lousy for me lately and won’t let me buy anymore cards from them) which highlight your photostream that you can give out to people that you run across while out shooting. Tell your friends and family and your offline “real life” contacts about your Flickrstream.

Bonus tip: Reciprocation. Above everything else, perhaps the most important thing about Flickr is that it is a community and a reciprocation based community. If you think that you can just post your photos on the site and they will garner thousands of faves and views simply because, you are wrong. Even the best photos on Flickr will not get very much attention if you simply upload them to the site and never participate.

Flickr has been built to encourage reciprocation. In fact a recent study cited reciprocation as the number one key to popularity on Flickr. Every single time you fave or comment on someone else’s photo you are giving them a link back to your own photostream. While you may not have the time to check out *everyone* who faves your photos, spend time each day faving and commenting on other people’s photos on Flickr. By sharing with others the fact that you appreciate their photos they will return the favor. Be generous with your faves and comments. Remember, other people like the attention as much as you do.

On Digg here.

Update: An interesting link to comments Flickr staff have made about the Explore algorithm here. Thanks, Ole!

Posted on

BBC NEWS: Yahoo ‘Censored’ Flickr Comments

BBC NEWS: Yahoo 'Censored' Flickr Comments

[I’m CEO of Zooomr]

BBC NEWS | Technology | Yahoo ‘censored’ Flickr comments More news on the recent censorship by Yahoo of Rebekka Gudleifsdóttir from the BBC.

It is interesting to see the BBC use the word "Censorship" with regards to this recent case with Flickr. I say interesting because the first official response from Flickr was to deny that this could be considered censorship.

Heather Champ:

"In joining Flickr, all of our members agree to abide by the Yahoo! Terms of Service and our Community Guidelines. Actions taken by the team to ensure that any content or activity on the site resides within these boundaries is not and cannot be viewed as censorship." (my emphasis)

Two months ago when I raised a different matter of censorship by Flickr Stewart Butterfield responded to me that I he thought I didn’t know what censorship meant linking to wikipedia and trying to dismiss that censorship couldn’t happen at Flickr.

Although Flickr has now "apologized" for this "mistake" (smart, given the backlash that they’ve received on the internet over this this week at places like digg, reddit, Slashdot, and now the BBC), the fact of the matter is that censorship has been quite rampant at Flickr and it’s unfortunate that it took such a high profile case to have the matter seriously addressed.

I have been censored by Flickr staff. My first response regarding this censorship was to contact Flickr privately which received no response. Since then I’ve asked about my own case of being censored many, many times publicly.

The only official response I’ve ever been able to get from Flickr came from Flickr staff member Eric Costello who wrote regarding my own censorship issue: "obviously I cannot comment on that case TH."

Many other individuals have also come out of the woodwork recently commenting about their own censorship that has taken place at Flickr.

"flickr did the same thing to me too – no explaqination and deleted my paid membership. sorry rebekka. i feel for you," wrote one flickr user.

The sad thing about this whole affair is that while Flickr claims to care about censorship, many of us are being censored there. What’s more, Flickr has promised to take steps to ensure what happened to Rebekka doens’t happen again and yet still refuses to outline what those steps exactly will be.

Perhaps most ironic of all, is that the thread dealing with this entire messy matter for Flickr on censorship has now been locked by Flickr staff. Convenient.

Thanks for the head’s up urban penguin.

On digg here.

Update: Down in the comments Flickr Chief Stewart Butterfield challenges me to write that child porn would be ok into Zooomr’s TOS. Rather than more rhetoric and PR spin Stewart should answer my question as to why Flickr censored me and offer an outline of what steps Flickr plans to take to ensure that less censorship happens there in the future. Here’s another blog post as well from LAist pointing out more ludicrous censorship on Flickr’s part. Like most higher profile cases though Flickr once again apologizes and would like us to move on.