Favorite... Most social networking based sites allow you to favorite or like a picture or video or text. Considering how many people around the world use this technology every day, it’s worthwhile to peel back the onion layers and look at Flickr favorites more closely.

Why do people favorite?
At the most Pavlovian level, a psychologist would say we push that little star because seeing it turn red makes me feel happy deep down inside. This seems silly perhaps, but in fact researchers have found that successful interaction with computers, like any more direct physical task, can bring about satisfaction and release of endorphins. Take a look at the star the next time you favorite a pic—do you notice how the star gets bigger and vibrates a bit? This is a feature added by the Flickr designers to make you want to do it again.

At a very functional level, people fave photos because it’s a way to collect them, either for personal enjoyment, or more evil uses like stealing them. I notice some people say on their Flickr page they will ban someone who is giving favorites with no comments, because of fear these people are stealing their photos. (I give a lot of fave only’s so I must be banned all over the place!)

Because Flickr is a social network, there are also social reasons why people favorite a picture. In their paper “Faving Reciprocity in Content Sharing Communities A comparative analysis of Flickr and Twitter,” Lee et al. used a Flickr dataset from 2006 to study faving behavior. First, they found three classes of Flickr users, roughly equal in size—those who only fave and receive none (lurkers), those who receive faves and give none (typically professional photographers), and those who both give and receive faves (typically amateur photographers).

Second, they found that about one-third of faves are reciprocated, i.e. if a person gives someone’s picture a fave, the person receiving it will fave one of the giver’s photos. Interestingly, they found (and I have observed similar) that the likelihood of reciprocity was higher between two people who were NOT contacts or friends. This indicates that faving reciprocity is in part social etiquette, like holding the door open for a stranger.

In their paper “How to Identify Successful Actors of the Flickr Community and How to Determine Their Attributes,” Egger et al. provide evidence that faves are also used by observers as an indicator of artistic weight. A picture or artist with many faves signals to observers, including potentially commercial ones, that the populace likes this art and so should they.

How does Flickr use favorites?
Flickr’s search engine is based on its calculation of a photo’s “interestingness”. The interestingness algorithm is proprietary and secret, but through studying the original Flickr patents and performing statistical analysis over the years, we’ve developed some insight into how faves work (see here and here for more). In summary, a fave is worth more to a photo than a comment or a view (of course you can’t fave without viewing). All else being equal, a picture with more faves is going to be more Flickr-interesting, and show up higher ranked in any search, especially under the “interesting” tab (less so in the “relevant” tab).

Which artist has received the most Flickr favorites?
I don’t have a definitive answer, but judging from the number of images that they have with over 1000 favorites, I would have to say Jim Patterson, Patrick Smith, and Philipp Klinger are candidates.

Which picture has the most faves?
Again I can’t say for sure, but here’s what I’ve found so far:
1. 5274—Untitled, by jam343 (which also has 1.7 million views)
2. 4390--Maelstrom, by Patrick Smith
3. 4199--Canton trade fair, by tarotasic

Who has given the most favorites?
I’ve given 128,062 faves. I know of three people who have more than that: i_love_you_get_away_from_me (611,477), Steve-h (260,212), and Billy Wilson (224,466).

Which our my photos have the most faves?
1. 949--Ansel Adams on color
2. 752--Each war is different, each war is the same
3. 388--Big wheel
4. 330--A change of scenery
5. 295--Reflections

Who have I faved the most?
There’s a nice program that can provide that information for you here. It can examine all your faves, or the last 20,000 (whichever is smaller). From my last 20,000 faves, which is about all of 2012, here’s who I’ve faved the most:

Walker Dukes (230)
AmsterS@m - The Wicked Reflectah (190)
Steve-h (Stephen Heron) (180)
Mel (173)
Tricia V... (Tricia) (160)
Qi Bo (146)
aimeeern (Amy) (145)
ilsebatten (141)
Sati Kobashi (137)
wRItinG, Ellyn (Ellyn Peirson) (136)
Irene2005 (Irene) (133)
Che-burashka (Ekaterina Nosenko (Katia)) (126)
greenschist (Steve Kleinheider) (125)
imagejoe (117)
CPMcGann (Carrie McGann) (116)
she comes into focus (Heather) (110)
AnnuskA - AnnA Theodora (Anna Theodora) (109)
remediate.this (Jody) (108)
the-father (Gernot Schreyer) (106)
brendan ó (105)
Zé Eduardo... (José Eduardo Silva) (101)
m.r. nelson (Mark Nelson) (100)
oybay© (Bob Davidson) (100)
*HamimCHOWDHURY* (99)
maktub77 - street dog (Sacha Dohmen) (97)

Tags:   favorite

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Flickr contacts are what makes Flickr “Flickr”. We can post our pictures on the web in any number of places. Flickr is about photography, but it is also a social network. Our interaction with our Flickr contacts determines how much we get out of our investment in Flickr.

Flickr contacts do a lot of things for us. They provide us a mini art gallery of new work each day to look at--an art gallery where we have 100% control of the artists in it. They give us words of wisdom, friendship, humor, and sorrow. Their art provides us with new ideas that improves our own work.

The nature of Flickr creates a unique environment by which to enjoy art. The everyday blog nature of Flickr links Flickr photos to the everyday rhythm and pace of the artist’s life—the ups and downs, the moments of extreme excitement and boredom, the life transitions, the seasons. Coupled with the ability to interact with the artist in a reciprocal relationship makes Flickr a “hot” medium.

I am convinced that Flickr contacts are the most common reason people leave Flickr. You have to nourish your network constantly. Keeping up with the social network aspect of Flickr takes a lot of time, and for any number of reasons this can become impossible or undesirable. Flickrites who can’t figure out how to create and engage an effective social network don’t get the level of traffic and comments on their pictures they expect and give up on Flickr.

I have 3663 total contacts: 239 are two-way (i.e. they are contacts with me and I am a contact of theirs), 33 are one-way from me to them (i.e. they are my contact, but I am not theirs), and 3424 are one-way from them to me. I have managed as many as 400 and as few as 150 contacts, but for me 250 is about the sweet spot.

I want to THANK the 31 Flickr contacts that I have had as contacts for three years or more: Hazed, ilsebatten, fotoaparatas, I'mMurphy'sLaw, losy, Anne Strickland, crowt59, brynmeillion, peggyhr, bryanilona, Sir Cam, Tailer's Family, André Pipa, LukeOlsen, i_love_u_get_away_from_me, tengtan, setsuna, abuela pinocho, jotKa26, Zé Eduardo, goorn23, the-father, spkennedy3000, Sati Kobashi, Celia, Zinni, ~lala~(Lisa), Steve-h, Lady Smirnoff, 3dphoto.net, Pisces Romance, and {maeve}. What joys you have given me!

I manage my network size through occasional purges—if someone doesn’t reciprocate my comments for a long period of time I have to make a judgment whether to keep or not. I do keep some contacts who never look at my work, but not many. When new contacts connect with me, I consider two questions: Will I like looking at their art every day, and will they be a good, reliable contact?

I have observed many different types of Flickr contacts over my three years of Flickring:
* The Reliable Contact—One or two pictures a day, every day, always reciprocates.
* The Weekend Contact—Posts one or two pics a day, and then catches up with their contacts on the weekend.
* The Haphazard Contact—Posts haphazardly, visits haphazardly. Still can be good contacts, they just are at a different activity level with Flickr. Sometimes Reliable and Weekend Contacts go through this phase.
* The Contact Who Dumped You—Won’t visit you even though you notice they’re visiting others.
* The Dead Contact—Isn’t visiting anybody.
* The Experimenting Contacts—Of course I love them! Always trying to push the boundaries with something new.
* The One Trick Pony Contacts—Yes I love the 1000 pictures of {Insert Obsession Here}, but could you try something different!
* The Blogging Contacts—Contacts who have as much to say as they do to show.
* The No Hands Contacts—Contacts who only fave, won’t comment.
* The Lurking Contacts—They don’t comment or fave, but they still may be viewing your work.
* The On the Cusp Contacts—They’re on the cusp of quitting Flickr… beware the drama!
* The Photo Dump Contacts—They post a lot of pictures every day. If they’re not good artists they won’t remain a contact very long… but if they’re really good artists, I don’t mind keeping up with the volume. Few can pull it off but there are some gems.
* The Teaching Contacts—Their art teaches us constantly how to improve ourselves.

Here’s Three Cheers for Contacts!

Tags:   flickr contacts flickr contacts

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Flickr is a unique way to view the joys, sorrows, and routines of human life.

Photography is a discrete technology, but life is continuous. You cannot learn about having a baby, or dancing, or cancer by simply typing in keywords and seeing what photos pop up. Life is experienced through watching real lives over days, weeks, months, and years. It’s about absorbing the process of living, the repetitiveness and the change.

I have been on Flickr for three years now, and my contacts and friends have allowed me to see their lives, and I have learned from it and been touched by it.

I have seen many Flickr lives come and go. The newcomers who have interesting photography but don’t ever seem to learn the nick of developing relationships. The flash in the pans who develop huge networks and gather front pages, and burn out in months. The people who no matter how hard they try are just not good photographers. And conversely, the people who within a period of a few special months turn from hacks into artists. The Flickr regulars who get burned out by the grind of Flickr, or whose connectivity is interrupted by the demands of their other “real” life.

I have seen that once people leave Flickr for any extended time, they never come back; or if they do, it’s not the same. A Flickr life is a treadmill and a marathon, and once you stop running, it never seems very appealing to start again.

I have seen babies and marriages and divorces and graduations and new jobs and travels and extended silliness and depression and death. I have seen my contacts use Flickr as a source of escape, exploration, and rejuvenation. I have seen artistic visions emerge, and run out of energy too.

Thanks for sharing your lives with me through Flickr.

Tags:   flickr

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Why do us dinosaurs cling to still photography when the rest of the world has turned to video? What is it about photography that is fundamentally different from video that makes it so appealing?

Part of photography’s magic is that is performs something that no other technology in the world can do—it stops time. While the content of a video may depict nonlinear or stopped time, it is still a temporal experience to the observer.

Still photographs are about the now. We can’t stop time in real life, but a photograph can. It allows our conscious to examine the moments that otherwise we can only experience subliminally, within a flow of reality. At the same time, a photograph explodes onto the viewer’s conscious immediately, unlike a video. While we may examine a photographic image for a period of time, or multiple times, our perception of the photo is still largely driven by that immediate judgment in the first second that we observe the image.

Ironically, photographs are also the best medium for us to see the progression of time. We can’t watch a 100-year long video to see if there’s been change in a glacier field, but we can look at two photographs a hundred years apart and see if there has been change.

What do you call a technology that can stop time and time travel?

Photography.

(Lake of the Woods, Mahomet, Illinois, Diana+ medium format camera with Rollei Retro 100)

Tags:   photography video

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