Who views my photos, why, how often, what brings them here?
Every day or so I check with Flickr to see what is being viewed the most, and what has been viewed the most overall.
Oddly, my most viewed image has more than ten times the views of the next most viewed, and to me is a fairly boring bland photo. Linking to it here would only drive the view count up higher, so I won’t!
New office desk, just like the old office desk
1760 views / Nobody counts New office desk, just like the old
office desk as a favorite / 0 comments
It hasn’t been there a great deal of time more than other photos, it’s only posted to one group, nobody posts comments on it and I have no idea why it gets viewed so often. Any ideas?
Next on the list
10/365 - Dad, are you sure this is an approved baby carrier?
116 views / 1 person counts this as a favorite / 1 comment
Now I can see why number two is popular, but not number one. Very puzzling.
Generally the most recently posted photos get a few views, I guess from my friends and contacts as they popup in feed-readers and various “what’s new” lists, but oddities stand out and I’d love to know what causes them. Surges of interest seem to come and go; one day it’ll be tandem bicycles, the next Milford sound, the day after that any parrots. Topical subjects in the news, both very local and world-wide, act as triggers, the PBS/RRR Community Cup and Melburn-Roobaix both kicked off an interest as their times of year came arond. Of course this posting itself will have an effect, you can’t measure something without affecting whatever it is you’re measuring….
Tinkering about I add tags here and there and have found that the more, and better, tags that photos have then the more likely it will to be viewed — hardly surprising, it means people can find it. They’re tagged, and where appropriate I try and find machine tags to add, and nearly all have latitude and longitude information in the EXIF data and in the geo-tags and can be found on the Flickr map.
Photos of the two weeks in China seem to attract a continual low-level interest, but nobody ever leaves comments on them so I have no idea who is looking at them.
All in all its a fascinating insight into what appeals to others, from a set of photos that vary wildly in quality and interest.
