I've had a Flickr account since January 2005 and I've used it regularly. Back when I had more time to spare I tired to upload only stuff I was proud of and only film, but then time grew tight and Flickr got bigger (and
bigger...and
bigger which means that a snob like me will start dissing it and taking it less seriously) and then Filmwasters came along so I started putting any old crap on Flickr; digital stuff, snaps from my mobile phone, screenshots from my PC. For the last couple of years it's been a dumping ground for more of less anything I have lying around and while there's a lot of stuff on there I'm proud of, there's also a lot that is just plain silly.
OK, so hopefully you get the picture about my Flickr usage, but you're wondering what on earth this post is all about, right?
Well here's the thing; recently a friend of mine made a remark on
Twitter about how he'd just reached the landmark figure of 3000 views on his Flickr photostream. At the time I thought that figure was a bit low and wondered why he'd even commented on it. He's not a photographer per se and not hooked-up into the photo world in any way, but he's a popular guy and a good artist (paints and suchlike) so I figured that although he was chuffed with topping 3000 hits, my own view count would probably be a bit higher, but even then I wouldn't know how to confirm this either way. It was a 20 second observation on my part and was then forgotten for several weeks....until earlier this week when I was doodling around with my Flickr account and I saw the option, "Your Stats". I remembered the Twitter post and so enabled stats on my account. I was advised to wait 24 hours till they were ready.
This evening I went and checked them and I was astonished to find that my stream has had
175,299 views since I opened my account. That figure absolutely amazes me. I'm not a Flickr 'celeb' in any way and I don't play the system to get more views (although I've recently started adding some photos to Groups - inspired by Moominsean!). In fact I really don't take the site seriously as an outlet for whatever 'art' is present in my 'work'. I save the stuff I'm proud of for sites like this one and my photoblog. But dang, 175,299 is quite a haul. I only have 1,533 photos up there in total which averages out at 114 views per photo. Now, in the interests of full disclosure it's worth mentioning that I did a shoot with the band, Coco Rosie, in 2005 and roughly 10,000 of my total views come from that, but that still leaves 165,299 views of all my other crap.
So to sum up....am I mad or is that a lot of exposure for a half-wit like myself? Should I therefore take Flickr more seriously? Alternatively, does that exposure actually mean anything in real terms? I've picked up the odd piece of work (some of it paid) from people seeing my stuff on Flickr, but it's pretty insignificant. I'm assuming that many, many people here will have far higher totals than I and I can only imagine how many views a Flickr star like
Tommy Oshima has. Other questions come thick and fast: are the 175,299 views genuine 'eyeballs' or are robots and feeds counted? That's a lot of people with time on their hands? Similarly, it's a lot of people who are looking at photos. And as there's a lot of cross-pollination going on, that's a lot of people taking pictures too.
I'd be interested to hear what you think about this (and also what your own Flickr stats are, fellow Filmwasters
).
