Last night I read Flickr's patent on its interestingness algorithm. Patents are not easy to decipher sometimes, especially if they're written well as this one is, but I think I have some interesting things to share...
(Note: Please don't confuse the following with a discussion about Explore. Explore depends on interestingness, but getting into Explore depends on a lot more than just interestingness.)
From reading the patent, it seems to me that the entire "Flickr System" is largely built around this notion of interestingness, so anyone who says that popularity and interestingness are not important in Flickr universe is dead wrong. My intuition is that Flickr was designed first as a means to provide superior search results to seekers of "media objects", and second as a social network. It's interesting to see that the patent description forsees video and other objects, as well as launched advertising specific to the content of the media object (i.e. image).
The basics of the "interestingness score" that Flickr calculates for each of your images have been discussed here and many places: how many faves, comments, notes, views, and where the views come from (e.g. an award group versus an outside search engine). Also discussed elsewhere is the "how many groups" question (answer: 1-5 good, +5 perhaps penalized).
Here are some tidbits from the patent that perhaps are less
intuitive...
--Interestingness is affected by how long it's been since your last
upload (it doesn't say how it takes any of these factors into account
by the way!)
--The EXIF camera data is important to have. If you are uploading
scanned images (e.g. film) it likely won't have such data. My recent
lomos didn't get into Explore until I added the EXIF data (I use a
Mac, so I used some freeware called "Reveal 1.2").
--Other metadata is important to have. I haven't done "controlled
experiments" on this, but my guess if the title, description,
tags, or sets are empty, that decreases interestingness.
--Interestingness is decremented over time (e.g. 2% a day); and is
decremented in the presence of metadata (in the title, text, tags,
comments, notes) of blacklisted words (you can guess what those are!)
I also found it interesting that an image's interestingness score can be customized to the requester of the score. For example, if you've faved a lot of my pics with a particular tag, then other pics that you haven't faved but which have the same tag will show up to you as "more interesting".
Of course, in the end, faves and views and comments and all that stuff is the outcome--the cause is having an interesting photo to start with!
(Explore)
danbuck57313, Kelvin Wong (Away), *melkor*, prdsra3, and 216 other people added this photo to their favorites.
View 20 more comments
mgw_wgw 40 months ago | reply
The real pole and the shadows and the few tufts of grass in front of the nicely textured white wall look quite fascinating :) Beautifully observed and composed. And an interesting discussion on what makes "interesting" on flickr :)!
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Seen on your photo stream. ( ?² )
Dirigentens 40 months ago | reply
Welcome to my lamp gallery!
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Found in a search. ( ?² )
kugel 38 months ago | reply
Hi, I'm an admin for a group called aeiou/[ not a single rule! ], and we'd love to have this added to the group!
CONGRATULATIONS!!!
You deserve the aeiou - Supreme Charming Prize!
Your photo is invited to the pool aeiou/[ not a single rule! ]!
hdlyra 38 months ago | reply
wow
radiotest2002 38 months ago | reply
Very interesting, this looks to me like mysterious symbols.
artland 37 months ago | reply
Hi, I'm an admin for a group called artland, and we'd love to have this added to the group!
Eddi van W. 36 months ago | reply
Hi, I'm an admin for a group called Creative Commons- Free Pictures, and we'd love to have this added to the group!
Eli the Bearded 34 months ago | reply
Flickr thinks this is the most relevant photo for the term "interesting".
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Found in a search. (?)
elizabethctaylor 33 months ago | reply
Very art.
Charlotte Davis 33 months ago | reply
very interesting, great shot, well done.
..ChEn.. 29 months ago | reply
Simple & beautiful :D
~Brenda-Starr~ 28 months ago | reply
It sure is!
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Found in a search. (?)
Nina Matthews Photography 26 months ago | reply
Top shot !!!
Jim Purcell 20 months ago | reply
Thanks for sharing this!
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Seen on your photo stream. (?)
augphoto 15 months ago | reply
Wonderful image.
thomas.michael. 13 months ago | reply
very interesting
ALVIN253 12 months ago | reply
I no what i maen
Padmacara 9 months ago | reply
Beautiful shot, wonderful comp! (Seen in 'Light Stalking')
australianpolicyonline 7 months ago | reply
Thanks from Australian Policy Online. This pic is on APO's home page (with attribution) for a few days from 19 October 2012. See www.apo.org.au/ (illustrating an article called 'Frank Gagliado’s schooling: a one-hundred year view). APO is a non profit website making the latest Australian and International social policy research available to the public. Thank you for listing your image with a Creative Commons license
victor98_2001 6 months ago | reply
nice shot