How to Live » flickr

12 More tips to become Famous in Flickr: Part 2

admin — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 03:10:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post, Getting Famous in Flickr: Killer tips for Flickr users , which provided some tips and tricks on using flickr - the most-loved photo sharing tool on the web – and becoming popular with it. I want to provide some more tips in this second post.

1. Essential things, First
Now, flickr requires a valid yahoo account (username and password) to login to it. As a newbie, you may be disappointed by the less number of views, comments on your uploaded photos. Select 10 best (or at least near best) photos of yours and upload them to flickr. By default, flickr uses your filename as the title of your photo – like this one, ‘DSC4506′ for a photo that you shot using your Point and Shoot camera. After uploading, flickr will ask you enter a title and description for each photo. Add a catchy title and a small description to provide more information on the photo. Additionally, tags can be added to each photo describing the location where you shot this photo, objects, the way you describe the photo and the meaning (story) the photo tries to convey. Tags are the keywords with which people will find your images and so you will add more descriptive tags (no inappropriate tags, please).

2. Write testimonials
I know it is difficult to start with the first testimonial, but, once you start writing one for your close friend. Others will follow. Browse through the photos of a contact and genuinely take notice of their style and what you appreciate in their flickr photo stream (some photos, common theme or lighting style).

3.Take part in flickr community discussions
Ask genuine questions or provide answers, opinions. Get involved in the discussion. There are plenty of groups specific to your camera, subject, geography or culture.

4. Attend flickr meets – Find your local group and join them. Find out when they are having a get-together. Visit and get to know them personally, share your flickr story.

5. Browse the Latest Photos from your Contacts List – Make a habit to comment on the latest photos posted by your contacts. Do it once a week. If you have too many contacts, keep the option of showing one photo per user (in your Contacts List). If you have very little time, find good photos among them and add them as your favourite.

6. Publish your love
You can get a composite image (mosaic) of all your contacts on a single page by following flickr fun buddies page (you must be logged into flickr when you click on the link). Publish your favourite photos once in a while as a composite image. You can visit http://bighugelabs.com/flickr to get various flickr toys – but, you can get your mosaics of your favourites using this mosaic tool.

7. Use GreaseMonkey scripts
A collection of useful scripts for flickr users can save you time and bring in pleasure to your flickr experience. You can do lot in less time and these scripts installed with Firefox browser will increase your productivity.

8. License your photos
If I have to attribute one reason for my popularity (apart from my lovely flickr friends who leave beautiful comments), then it is the Creative commons licensing. Share your photos to the world – so that people can use your photos in their blogs and web pages ( of course with a link back to your photo stream).

9. Concerned about image thefts?
I always resize all my images to 800 by 600 pixels before I upload them to flickr – so, with that small size and 72 dpi, it is hardly any use for publication purposes. If people need high quality images, I can supply them.

10. Flickr swap
Swap your photos with fellow flickrites. Send a flickrmail if any of your contact would like to exchange photos with you. You can exchange postal addresses.

11. Take your flickr photos with you
With Moo cards, you could print 100 of your photos for US $24 and mailed to you. You can choose to include your address, flickr url on the back of the moo card to use them as your business cards.

12. Publish your flickr RSS feeds
With social networks, publish your photo feed. Orkut, Tumblr, Facebook and Ziki allows you to add your photo stream as RSS feeds. All you need to do is point your flickr RSS feed url that can be found on the bottom page of your flickr main page when you are logged in and it will look like this http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?id=46458074@N00&lang=en-us&format=rss_200

Just use the RSS feed url at those services and forget it. As you upload new photos, they get updated in these places as well. Cool, huh?

Get famous in flickr with these tips. If you have got some tip, share here in the comments section.

Related Posts for flickr users:

How to get into Flickr Explore? (Revised)

Get Famous in Flickr: Killer tips for Flickr users

25 Useful scripts for Flickr users that make your more productive

How Flickr has changed since 2004:Screenshots Timeline

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

How to get into Flickr Explore? (Revised)

admin — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 01:21:00 +0000

As you know, Flickr uses an algorithm to choose the best 500 photos every day and post them on Flickr Explore page. This mesmerizing collection is done auto’magic’ally by an “interestingness algorithm” which rates each photo on the basis of its ‘goodness’. It does by considering factors such as how many have viewed a photo, how many have commented on it and how many have favourited it. It is not merely the most views, most favourites or most comments.

Here’s what Flickr says: “There are lots of things that make a photo
‘interesting’ (or not) in the Flickr. Where the clickthroughs are coming from;
who comments on it and when; who marks it as a favorite; its tags and many more
things which are constantly changing. Interestingness changes over time, as more
and more fantastic photos and stories are added to Flickr.”

As I tried to crack down this interestingness puzzle, I figured out certain shortcuts by which you can get to the Flickr Explore page.

Get this basics straight. Favourites matter more than comments. Comments matter more than views. Not plain views, comments or favourites. But favourites-comments-views by active, professional Flickr users. A professional user is NOT the one who has a Flickr pro account, but who has more of his photos on Explore page, who frequently comments, favourites others photos. Got it right?

Here are those Five tips..

5. It’s all about Tag honey!

Tags are everything. Add some relevant tags to the photo. How to decide what is a relevant tag? If you have a flower photo, add ‘flower’ as one tag rather than ’serenity’ or ’spiritual’ (even if that is the mood conveyed!)

4.Choose your BEST photo for promoting

Select your best photo. The photo which you want to promote to Flickr’s Best 500. Keep that as the latest photo. That is, when visitors coem to your photo stream, they should view that in the first page. [How do you decide which one is your best photo? Go to Your photos and sort based on "Interesting" - select the first photo on that list!]Or better, post it on your profile page (like mine). [Go to All Sizes, select Medium Size, Copy the HTML code from Option 1. Now, come to your profile page, click Edit Profile and paste the code in the desired location and Save]

3.Bring the Experts to view your photo
Now, it’s time to invite expert photographers to comment on your photo. Go to Explore page. Select a photo which is similar to yours (If your photo is flower, select a flower photo which has made it to the Top 10). This is to ensure to invite the expert commentors to view your photo. How do you invite them? Simple, add them as a contact. Add photographers (professionals) who have taken some great pictures.

And, see their photo stream and favourite some of their best photos. Only by giving good remarks, you get some

2.Remove your photo from Groups
Yes, you heard me right. I am so sorry, if you are like me who used to post it in 20+ groups. According to the recent changes in the algorithm (Feb 2006), if your photo is in many groups, it will devalue the interestingness [penalty]. At most, you may keep in 5 groups, after getting enough visibility for 2 or 3 days, you may remove from them and repost it in another set of five groups. It is a trade-off between “More visibility (in many groups)” and “Making it to the Explore page”. Decide what you want.

1.Shoot a Great Picture!
Nothing beats an excellent photo. Well, you can bring experts to view your photo. What if it doesn’t live upto their expectations? So, take good pictures. Always make it a habit to visit Explore page and learn good tricks.

Additional Tip #1: Post your photo early in the day rather than closing time of the day. I don’t know how do you figure that out. But, earlier photos will get more ranks through Flickr Explore pages. [Yea, "Rich getting Richer" theory]

Additional Tip #2: Use this ‘Scout‘ tool to find if you are in Flickr 500. Sign in with your Flickr account ID and password to make the job easier.

Wish you good luck.

Related Posts for flickr users:

How to get into Flickr Explore? (Revised)

Get Famous in Flickr: Killer tips for Flickr users

25 Useful scripts for Flickr users that make your more productive

How Flickr has changed since 2004:Screenshots Timeline

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

How Flickr has changed since 2004:Screenshots Timeline

admin — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 02:07:00 +0000

via thiru’s flickr stream

Flickr is a popular online photo sharing tool where you can upload photos, share with your friends, comment on photos or just sit back and browse photos. The real success lies in the community actions such as commenting on photos, favourite photos and messaging groups – they are missing in other online photo sharing tools.

The coolest way to browse flickr is through flickr explore – where a computer-based algorithm shows some of the best and finest images uploaded by flickr members. It lists the 500 top photos for each day of the year.

This post lists some interesting facts on Flickr (with the help of Google News Archives) and the early screenshots of it’s homepage (courtesy of Internet Archive Wayback Machine). Check the the archives of flickr homepage here.

(Early days, April 2004)

(Early days, May2004)

Flickr has just celebrated its fourth birthday (Feb 2007), but it is widely known to the users as (arguably) the coolest web 2.0 application on the web.

(July 2004)

Flickr was founded by Stewart Butterfield (his flickr page) and Caterina Fake (her flickr page). Incidentally, they met through blogs (http://www.caterina.net/) and became life-partners.

(November 2004)

Flickr was born in Canada. It grew out of an online multi-player game named, ‘Game Never ending’ (shelved), that was being developed by LudiCorp. Fake and Butterfield’s company, Ludicorp, never did launch a game.

(March 2005)
Yahoo purchased Flickr in March 2005. Even at that time, it is was a small company managed by only 11 employees.

(January 2006)

Looking to buy a Digital Camera? Check Out The Camera Finder page on flickr that shows graphs that reflect the number of Flickr members who have uploaded at least one photo with a particular camera over the last year. See sample images, tech specs and how many others have purchased.

(throughout 2006 – same layout with different images)

As on 7th of July, Flickr hosts close to 75 million photos. How do you figure that number? Easy. Visit the Flickr Expore page and click on most recent uploads and click on the bottom-right photo (the last uploaded one), you will find a number something like 743708779 just divide that by 10 million (1 followed by 7 zeroes) you will get 74.4 million photos. Wow!

On an average (July 2007) about 1500 photos are being uploaded every minute.

(2007 – major change in layout)

In June 2007, the logo changed from ‘Flickr Gamma’ to “Flickr Loves You”.

According to Wikipedia, Yahoo is completely blocked in the United Arab Emirates and Chinese ISP’s have started blocking flickr since June 2007.

Yahoo is closing Yahoo photos in favour of flickr and provides options to easily move your photos to flickr.

Want to read more?

Birth of Flickr – USA Today – a good article covering the flickr history.

Caterina talks about the Early Days of Flickr – audio podcast on IT conversations.

Guess what has not changed all these years. Our love for Flickr!

Related Posts for flickr users:

How to get into Flickr Explore? (Revised)

Get Famous in Flickr: Killer tips for Flickr users

25 Useful scripts for Flickr users that make your more productive

How Flickr has changed since 2004:Screenshots Timeline

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Get Famous in Flickr: Killer tips for Flickr users

admin — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 02:34:00 +0000

Oh, yes. Everybody loves flickr - the online photo sharing web service. Actually, it is so cool that the 10% flickr users create content (upload photos) for the rest of 90% of the audience.

Flickr explore is mesmerizing and infective – every user stumbling across the page is tempted to spend their life time browsing through the beautiful, amazing images.

Well, how some flickr users get lots of favourites, comments and a huge fan following? Well, here are the hacks / tips from old skoolers of flickr .

1. Upload your best photos only: Yes, newbies tend to upload everything they click – stop it. If you want to upload them – create a separate flickr account for dumping your photos. But, have one beautiful account and upload only the best ones.

For God sake, write a title instead of the default “DSC29456″ or “flower” etc. Think something imaginative (How would you describe your photo?) and write an apt title. Post a short description on why, how, and where you shot your masterpiece.

2. Invite your friends: People with yahoo account will find it easy to signup (Flickr is Yahoo company, now!). Your friends will be your best admirers (even if you take average photos). But, as you take more photos, you will improve.

3. Post to groups: For initial days, post your photo to relevant flickr groups. If you have taken a ‘close-up shot of a flower’ then consider posting it in macro groups, flower groups, colour groups etc.

4. Fill in the profile: We personally hate the default ‘nothing much’ profiles. So, fill in who you are and give a personal touch. Post your best photo up in the profile. Show that you are serious about learning photography.

5. Comment on other’s photos: Flickr works on an unwritten principle. If you comment on photos of other people, at least they will pay a courtesy visit to your photo stream. Have some good photos for such courtesy visits.

6. Use productivity tools: Ditch Internet Explorer, use Firefox. Because, with Greasemonkey installed, you can make advantage of the plenty of productivity tools available will save you time and make you efficient with flickr.

7. Bring the horses to water: There is a saying that you can lead the horses to the water, but you can not make them drink it.

Forget it, by ”horses” – I mean – the ace photographers are always thirsty for good photos. So, add them as contact and admire their photos – favourite it, send flickr mail or invite them to comment on your photos. Sure, they will come.

8. Find who is in your neighbourhood: Take part in your neigbourhood flickr group. None exists? lucky you – create a flickr group. You can always search flickr members based on their location, city keywords or interests etc.

9. Add a Creative Commons License: Yes, dont worry about ‘image thefts’ or theives. You can choose ‘Attribution’, Commercial or Non-commercial use of your photos. Believe it, after we attached the CC license, our images got linked by external blogs and websites – showcasing your images and your photo stream link to world audience.

Always resize your photos (using an easy photo editing tool like Google Picasa) to 800 by 600 pixel and upload to flickr.

What is the best tip you can provide for starters on Flickr. Share with us.

Related Posts for flickr users:

How to get into Flickr Explore? (Revised)

Get Famous in Flickr: Killer tips for Flickr users

25 Useful scripts for Flickr users that make your more productive

How Flickr has changed since 2004:Screenshots Timeline

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

25 Useful scripts for Flickr users

admin — Sun, 13 May 2007 08:09:00 +0000

Flickr is a nice, popular online photo sharing tool. Here is a collection of tools and scripts that will enhance your flickr experience.

Enjoy these collection and feel free to suggest any useful script or additional tool that I might have missed.

Scripts to enhance Flickr browsing experience:

Tip: To install these scripts, you must get Firefox browser and Greasemonkey extension [Read a 30 sec description on GM]. Once you install the Greasemonkey, you will see a smiling monkey icon on the right-bottom corner of your browser. These scripts need to be automatically installed when you select install option.

when not needed, you can click on the monkey icon to disable all GM scripts. If you need to choose to disable only few of the GM scripts, then go to Tools —> Greasemonkey —> Manage User Scripts

Photos:

Flickr – Photo Rank -Displays the photo rank (if the photo can be found in 1000 most interesting photos of the day)

Flickr Photo Page Enhancer – Adds links to different sizes directly to a Flickr photo page, generates html code to easily copy’n paste thumbnail & description, and automatically loads your 20 most used tags when you click “Add Tag.”

Flickrati – Now you can check who has linked your photo (external websites / blogs)
Flickr Photo Link – Generate a small attributed Flickr photo link for use in blogs / websites.
Flickr Auto Page – Infinite Scrolling for Flickr. No need to hit the next page.
Flickr Ad Removal – Get rid of Ads.
Flickr image unblocker- A script to remove the invisible image (spaceball.gif) blocking images on flickr.
Flickr Photostream Graphr – Graph the number of times your photostream has been viewed (Sometimes, it doesn’t work!)

Discussions:

flickrQuoter – Flickr Quoter adds a “quote” link to flickr discussions, and Flickr Mail, making it easier to quote people.
Flickr Group Display – Calculates favourite-to-view ratios. Easier management for the photos you have in view and favorite groups such as topv-111.

Comments:

Flickr Rich Edit – Adds a simple rich edit interface (Bold, Italic, Blockquote, Link) to any comment textarea on flickr.
FlickrCommentTools – a simple HTML editor for those who need not bother with code.
AutoSmile for Flickr – You can now add smileys and emoticons with your comment with ease.
Flickr Refer Comment – Referrer for your comments “seen from Contacts page / Group page etc”
Flickr Follow Comments – You can choose to follow a comment (when you ask a question to the user etc)
Flickr – Move comment form up – Now, no need to scroll to the bottom to comment.

Contacts:

Flickr Contacts Organiser – Lets you add tags to any flickr user, list contacts by tag, no. of favs etc.
Favourite finder – Easy way to find who is your favourite flickr user is (by the max. number of fav photos).

flickrPM – Adds icons for mail, profile, favourites, Scout, Interestingness, photo archive and “change relationship” next to usernames.

Flickr – People in this photo – Tag a photo Person:username and this script will display a link to the user in the photo! It also displays a fancy little thumbnail image of the user
Flickr unknown reverse contacts - On your flickr reverse contacts page, the names of those who are not on your contact list appear in red.

Groups:

Flickr Multi Group Sender – Lets you send an image to multiple groups at single step.

Flickr Groups Organiser – Lets you tag/categorise your groups to help you find them again more easily and also lets you quit groups more easily

Flickr group search with Google – Adds a Google search to Flickr Group page that you are viewing.

Flickrmail:

Flickr MultiMailer – Lets you send Flickr Mail to multiple recipients at once.
Flickr Mail Manager – Adds some options to help manage your Flickr mailbox. Including “Mark all as read” and delete all Notification emails, such as “you are x’s newest contact” and Group Invitations.

Related Posts for flickr users:

How to get into Flickr Explore? (Revised)

Get Famous in Flickr: Killer tips for Flickr users

25 Useful scripts for Flickr users that make your more productive

How Flickr has changed since 2004:Screenshots Timeline

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Edit Photos online

admin — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 05:09:00 +0000

It annoys me. Just to crop a picture, I have to use a heavy, RAM-hungry Adobe photoshop. A free, light alternative to Photoshop is irfanview – which can fit into a floppy drive (remember it?).

When you are online, you can use this new service named picnik – a web service that allows to upload your photo – crop, edit or color-correct, fancy framing etc.

It works with the flickr or picasa web album photos as well. Picnik does not neet any installation, it works well with Windows or Mac.

A premium edition is coming soon with a price tag, but for basic editing picnik is great!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Celebrity Face Collage

admin — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 06:07:00 +0000

(photo courtesy by Ernesto JT)

myHeritage allows you to a create a celebrity collage for a photo in 3 steps.

1. You upload a photo – where a recognizable face of a person is seen.

2. A face recognition program runs through it and provides a collage of look-alike celebrities resembling the face that you presented in the photo.

3. You can save the picture publish in may sites, blogs directly from there.

Enjoy creating celebrity image for you.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Popular Urls

admin — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 04:12:00 +0000

There are plenty of web2.0 social sites out there, by the time, you finish a circle, they will be some more.

Popurls aggregates content from the Web’s most popular social sites, so you can see in one fell swoop the hottest stories from Digg, the most popular photos from Flickr, the latest bookmarks on Del.icio.us, the most watched videos from YouTube, and other sites.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Write your Autobiography

admin — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 09:08:00 +0000

Ever wanted to write your autobiography? Well write it with Dandelife.

Dandelife is a social network (like Orkut) built around the telling of your life’s stories. You can use Dandelife to create your own personal biography and then share that with the rest of the world.

Imagine all your own notes on all the people you’ve met, the places you’ve been, the events you’ve gone to and the stories you could tell about them all. That’s your Dandelife.

You add (your own) photos from flickr and videos from youtube and make it a lively story.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Create, Share your Videos

admin — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 08:43:00 +0000

Well, Viddler can become the flickr for videos.

Viddler is a fresh, creative web application that allows you to upload, edit, and share digital video easily and expediently inside your web browser.

You may upload videos shot using camcorders, digital cameras or cell phones. Viddler aims to create a flash-based (like youtube) online, content management system to store, manage your videos.

Will be online soon.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.