Influx Insights Tag Feed: flickr

influx startling fact of the day- photo uploads

Influx Insights — 2008-07-24T12:44:19Z

"Flickr is currently receiving 60 uploaded photos a second, roughly 10 times the number of people born on Earth per second."

Source: Flickr

Posted by Ed Cotton

deep diving into 2.0 data- learning from flickr

Influx Insights — 2008-05-20T09:29:01Z

Students at LIAFA University in Paris partnered with a team at Orange Labs to do some deep dive investigating into the Flickr site using some data from 2006 and produced this paper.

They came up with some interesting findings.

- 20% of users account for 82% of all photos

- Pro users make up just 3.7% of users, but account for over 59% of all photos

- 39% of users are inactive

- 23% of users have no public photos, but have used the site to communicate

- 64% of contacts are reciprocated

- To become famous on Flickr you can't just be a good photographer, you need to contribute. One of the star photographers made over 51,000 comments in an 18 month period

What the research shows is the amazing power of a very small group of users to shape the community. This group puts enormous efforts into tagging, commenting and discussion that turns Flickr from a photo storage site into a vibrant community.

Flickr appears to have managed this group really well giving them enough freedom and listening when needed.

The paper also notes Rebekka Guoleifsdottir from Iceland, the Flickr star, who has risen from obscurity to internet and real world fame.

As the Guardian pointed out in 2006.

"Three o'clock one Icelandic morning, Rebekka Guoleifsdottir couldn't sleep. There was a picture in her mind's eye, and only one way to realise it. So she picked up her camera, drove out of her home town and stood in a lake for an hour, water lapping at her knees. She took picture after picture after picture until she got the right shot.

It did not appear on an advertising billboard, gallery or magazine but on the internet, along with hundreds of other photos she has posted to huge acclaim, catching the eye of the Wall Street Journal and Germany's Der Spiegel magazine. In the latest demonstration of the internet's power to launch careers, Rebekka has now landed a lucrative deal with the car maker Toyota and is set to make a fortune by selling her work online.

Yet just over a year ago the single mother was still teaching herself how to use a camera, a Canon Digital Ixus, without reading the manual. She had already put some of her drawings on Flickr, a community website where users post their pictures for others to view, and decided to add some of her early photos. The instant response was encouraging so, despite having no training as a photographer, she upgraded her camera and kept expanding her page. To date it has received 1.6m visits, making it the most popular of all Flickr's 4m users.

'The web changes opportunities for all kinds of artists, like musicians,' said Guoleifsdottir, 28, speaking from her home in Hafnarfjorour, near Reykjavik. 'It's so much easier to get your stuff out there. Iceland is a small community of 300,000 people and it's hard to get recognised, but this way you can reach out everywhere."

Posted by Ed Cotton

a mash-up between flickr and tv

Influx Insights — 2007-09-29T11:04:17Z

This is an intersting mash-up between a Dutch cable network and Flickr. The cable channel is hosting a DJ set by Dave Clarke and using Flickr viewers can search for images to add visuals to the experience.

Interesting to see how conventional TV networks can bring more interactivity to their users and this case it's certainly going to be create a richer, more social experience because it's on TV versus a computer.

More info here - in Dutch

Posted by Ed Cotton

flickr activitates its community

Influx Insights — 2007-06-06T19:46:27Z

No 21 on Influx's predictions for 2007 was the Flickr's "People's Photography Show" in Central Park. They are doing something close to this at the weekend in a community event called 24 Hours of Flickr.

Here's what it is:

1. On May 5th Flickr is asking its community to chronicle its day in pictures.

2. They are asking people to submit these photos to a group

3. Some photos will be included in a book

4. There will also be a exhibition of photos at Flickr events around the world

5. Books will be sold at cost with $1 for every sale being given to Medicin San Frontiers

It's a great idea with a ton of potential; the extensions are smart, the social element gives added purpose to the project. What's especially interesting is the brand activating its user base to do something. Post this week's Digg debacle, the debate about communities controlling brands is a hot one, but there clearly needs to be a balance between the brand and its community.

A brand like Flickr has the power to activiate its community to do good. Imagine other Flickr challenges around hunger or global warming. There could also be competitions with prize money. The potential of the active brand challenge is limitless and very engaging. It's a natural way to generate great user content and obvious for a photo site.

how to encourage participation

Influx Insights — 2007-04-26T11:29:00Z

Bill Tancer of Hitwise recently presented some interesting stats on participation levels on Web 2.0 sites, his research found that only .16% of all YouTube visits were to upload video and only 0.2% of Flickr visits were to upload photographs.

As we are in the “Participation Age” there seems to be a need to expand the number of participants. It’s questionable if brands are doing enough and by brands, we mean these Web 2 brands and creative brands in general; video cameras, computer brands, digital camera brands, printer brands, etc….

Obviously, the 1% rule is being played out, but think of the market potential if that 1% could be increased to 2%.

Brands in this space need to think about how they can encourage participation, this is part incentive and partly education. The education part is important and can obviously there need to be different streams for different segments; from the non-user, to the user who isn’t interested in sharing.

Clearly all brands that want to move into the Web 2 space and create community and conversation need to listen up, this stuff doesn’t just magically happen, it needs encouragement and education.

One interesting example is the Daily Telegraph newspaper in the UK, yesterday it launched a blogging service for its readers. For many, this could sound foolish, given the abundance of free blogging platforms, but this is smart as it’s going to attract their readers who trust DT more than the small blogging brands. In addition, in a challenging time for newspapers, there is a lot to gain by doing this and is reaching out and providing education and utility for a new group of participants.

Participation is the tangible offshoot of engagement, which has become the fashionable thing to try and measure these days.

It’s clear, if brands want thriving communities and strong brand relationships, they need do more than pay lip service to the notion of participation.

Is participation a new metric for engagement?