Here’s a mystery for you: When I was down in LA earlier this month, I took and uploaded these two pictures to Flickr:
We’d gone to see the Rembrandt exhibit at the Getty and my dad had insisted on buying me this little poseable dummy from the gift shop. When I got home, I randomly snapped the one on the right and uploaded it to Flickr. The next day, I took the one on the left.
The second one was a little more on purpose. I liked the jokey noir-ish image of the handcuffed pose and the ominous shadow of this tiny little doll. Also, the newspaper article it’s standing on is about a murder that took place in the house where I grew up. I also happen to think it’s a better photo: cleaner composition, clearer choice of focus, more dramatic use of lighting.
Anyway, within a couple of days the one on the right had gotten more than a hundred views and received a comment. There was a while one evening when everytime I’d reload the page five or ten more views would appear in the counter. The picture on the left, on the other hand, has been viewed ten times and received exactly zero comments.
Now, I didn’t do aything to try to draw views to the one picture or keep them away from the other. I added neither of them to a group, I tagged both of them identically. I couldn’t find any clues as to why the photo on the right got 100 views (which is a lot for a photo of mine on Flickr — it’s my 11th most viewed photo, above all but pics related to my Guest Check PDA, which got linked to from 43 Folders).
There’s really just no explanation. Sometime the random mob of Flickr users just jumps on something without explanation or cause (just like every other group of people in the world). There must be something to be learned here about the social network, or something, but I can’t figure out what it is. I’m baffled!
Technorati Tags: flickr, photo, crowd, random, behavior, social network, rembrandt, getty, drawing model
1. a murder took place in your house?!
2. here’s a hypothesis: the image on the left has the snap-shot look characteristic of point-and-shoot cameras– foreground blown out and background dark. perhaps people skimming for interesting or “artsy” images on flickr automatically bypass such images, assuming they’re “non-art” images. Interesting… or, maybe it just has to do with patterns of uploading and viewing on the flickr site. But can it really be called mob behavior, if everyone is acting without knowledge of everyone else’s actions?
mmmm… I’m going to bed now. And you’ll notice it’s 11 pm, thank-you very much.
The second one has a Mac in it. I noticed that some of my most mundane photos that had my computer in them would get a lot of views, so I ran a test.
http://flickr.com/photos/maven/254518392
and
http://flickr.com/photos/maven/254518640
Now, nothing as dramatic happened as with your photos, however, the one with the Mac in it got a lot more views and a lot faster. I’ve found that people love to look at Macs on Flickr.