Flickr counts

Perhaps it all relates to the work that I do, dealing with digital images at my library and assessing the use of them. I'm not sure. Maybe I'm just a geek at the superficial aspects of social media. Feel free to speculate quietly on your own. The fact is, though, I'm altogether fascinated by the hits on our Flickr albums.

(full disclosure: the album I am referring to is the one for things Conrad and I do together - I have another account wherein I post things of my own, mostly conference photos)

I think it started a couple of years ago or so when I noticed that a picture - not even a very good one, not much descriptive metadata with it - was getting hits day by day it seemed. Oh, not a lot. Go look for, say, naked people on Flickr - those are likely the photos that are getting thousands of views. But no, this one photo was popular, and the referrer data suggested that people Googling "chocolates" were coming to it. Fair enough. Eventually interest tapered off, and while there have been 156 views in total (and two in the past month), the photo has gone from being #1 down to #8 in terms of all-time views.

In fact, it didn't remain #1 for long. Later in 2009, Conrad and I visited with Jeph (and his boyfriend, Brett, on whom I still unabashedly have a crush) in Ohio. Among the activities that weekend was wine tasting. And at a certain point after the visit and the posting of the photos, one image started getting hit. A lot, relative to my album. 15-30 hits a day for days on end. After a month or so, the hits stopped. I am not sure it's been viewed since. More mysteriously, the referrer data gave me no clue whatsoever as to why. It's #4 on the list now with 453 hits.

#3 comes from earlier this year while Vancouver was in the midst of Stanley Cup fever. Conrad and I were in Granville Island Market, and in a bakery we like to shop at, we noted some Canucks pucks - brownies with the hockey team logo on them. I tweeted the link to the photo, and it was retreated soon after by someone who evidently had a good number of followers. In two days views soared. Since then there have been occasional views, and it now sits at 873.

#2 is another mild mystery. I haven't been able to determine why a photo from last year of the Shangri-La Hotel in Vancouver has been so popular. No one source. General searches I suppose. It's a very grey photo, though it's a mildly interesting shot of the hotel tower. It's slightly ahead of the Canucks pucks with 878 views.

No photo has made it to 1000 views (although the photostream, collections, sets, and images together have surpassed 100,000), but a 2009 photo has reached 962. Not too far off. Here's the caption: Post-dinner chocolates, Shanghai Terrace, Peninsula Hotel. That's it. It's an odd, slightly blurry iPhone photo of chocolates on a Chinese soup spoon in a wooden cage. No, I can't explain it either.

I thought I might be in for another such curious anomaly a few days ago when I noticed that photos of eggs Benedict with smoked salmon (breakfast two mornings in a row near the hotel in Pasadena last month).
Alas, after two or three days, views of those images have tapered back off. Perhaps something else will make a run for the top in the future. We'll see.

So far 19 out of 8000+ images have been viewed 100 times or more. In the end, it's rather gratifying that at least a few of the images have been enjoyed so well.