Flickr Explore - What's the point?

ReD

Hall of Famer
RANT - I'm a newbee to Flickr so the process is all a bit weird to me but as Explore is not something I ever look up I was surprised to find out through an invitation that one of my images has hit explore - I have no idea of its ranking & to be frank having now seen some of the Explore images I couldn't give a rat's whatsit. As a plaudit it seems utterly valueless.

What is surprising is how the number of views has shot up & OK I'm also getting more "favs", but I note some of these people have near half a million images in their favourites ( I mean ... WTF??)

I know for my part I'm compiling & selecting my favourite images based on images I personally rate & enjoy looking at (for whatever reason).

Rant over until the next one.
 
Just disregard it as any metric of what is good in an image. It uses an algorithm to calculate what images are "popular" (which many often perceive incorrectly as "good"). So for some reason, one of your recent images has been clicked on by a lot of different people (and the clickers arrived there from different places). And maybe half of them (or more) are just trying to boost their own "stats" hoping for reciprocal faves. But don't let that sully the experience. More people are seeing your photos, and while we are bound to try to produce images that please ourselves...... it is still nice when others enjoy them, too.

And while it may be easy to dismiss the sincerity of some of those faves, consider that some of the others are genuine.

Block out the background noise and keep making great images. :clap2:
 
If I get a half dozen views, I reckon I am doing OK. I don't look at Explore very often, once in a while to see if theres something new I need to be seeing or someone I want to follow, but it rarely digs anything up for me. Or maybe I am just a curmudgeon. I look and fave things I like at the time. I probably have hundreds by now, but I don't often go back and look at them again, and I expect nobody goes back and looks at mine, which they faved. It doesn't matter, really. Flickr, for me, is useful as a way of having things ready to share elsewhere (like here). In an of itself... its not really what I would choose, otherwise. But, its free, and the pennies matter to me, these days.
 
I'm mainly using my flickr accounts as a free additional backup system for projects, my favorite images or the more casual trees & bees that I share here there but keep those accounts private. Not exactly what it is intended for but so what. I spent some time exploring the flickrverse when I started out there but found other, more specialized photocosms far more fascinating.
 
Can you tell us which ones . . . ?

Well, basically I was referring to blogs or galleries of photographers or niches on specific facets of photography that I find attractive; it all boils down to moreless individual preferences and some sort of ongoing Q&A trip, but that's a different story altogether.
 
I left Flickr a couple of years ago when Marissa Mayer steered it over a cliff. Today I am a very happy customer of Ipernity, with a "Club" (equivalent to "Pro") account. I strongly objected to Flickr monetising my images by placing advertising into streams. In my time there I had many photos favourited and more than a few featured. It's nice to have your efforts recognised, but it is very much along the "nice capture", nummy noise lines. It really means nothing in the great scheme of things.

On both Flickr and Ipernity there appear to be people who favourite almost randomly. Certainly there are some (and there were some in my days on Flickr) who star everything that I produce - and it's certainly not all that good. On the plus side, on Ipernity I have found that there are people who genuinely take the time to trawl through, and comment and favourite in a meaningful manner. They step beyond just clicking a button and genuinely make the effort to build up a relationship.

Ultimately I use Ipernity in the same way as I used Flickr - as an online repository for my images that I can easily access to post to other places, such as here. Anything else is a "bonus" - or a pain in the arse, depending on your point of view.
 
Yeah, as a plaudit it's pretty worthless. And, from what I can tell there's no real rhyme or reason to how they pick stuff. I've had periods where I'll have one after another shots turn up on Explore, some of them good, some of them completely run of the mill IMHO, and then long periods where nothing turns up there. The only upside is that it gets your stuff seen by more people, the response can be pretty heavy, and sometimes I find other shooters I like when I see folks who have started following me (because of an Explore shot) whose work I then check out. I've never browsed explore personally, but I'm quite sure I've come across some really fine photographers as a result of it, when they start following me, I check them out, and then sometimes start following them in return...

So I can't say I find it totally worthless, but it seems pretty arbitrary and I have NO idea what kind of algorithms their bots use to choose them. The first time I was aware of a shot turning up there, I was really bothered by all of the responses and automated emails I was getting. I've since changed my notifications and it doesn't bother me one way or the other...

-Ray
 
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