Originally uploaded by Richard Keith
Tag Archives: Flickr
Flickr Uploads Gone Wild
I wonder what’s going on with Flickr.
Up until a couple of days ago, it was pretty normal to see 4,000 to 5,000 photo uploads a minute, according to the Flickr Most Recent Uploads page. In the evenings, Pacific time, these numbers would be a little lower, usually between 2500-3500 per minute.
Last night, I noticed the numbers were in the 24,000 to 30,000 photos per minute range !
And today, they’re in the 45,000 photos per minute range.
Either there’s been some kind of massive (by a factor of 10) sudden increase in usage – or Flickr’s number is now based on something completely different.
Anyone have any insights ?
What Happens When Microsoft Becomes Your Daddy?
Microsoft’s 44.6 billion dollar bid to buy Yahoo is obviously big news today.
It’s a reminder of how quickly things can change when the core business in based on bytes, not bricks.
In the case of Flickr, it creates a very interesting situation – we’ll see how it plays out. The issue here isn’t money or size, it’s credibility and image.
Flickr is a photo sharing site, and a darling of the Web 2.0 crowd. There are other, more popular photo sharing sites, but among other things, Flickr provides an open API . And that means people have found lots of creative ways to plug into the Flickr functionality in ways that suits them best. Flickr’s approach has always been making it easy for users to share their photos, and to plug into that sharing framework in any way they want.
Personally, I love Flickr. It’s very good at what it does, it’s free, it was originally built in Vancouver, and it has kept true to its community roots.
A few years ago, Flickr was purchased by Yahoo . If the Microsoft deal goes through, Flickr will be a Microsoft property.
And if there’s one thing about those web 2.0 people – they almost all detest Microsoft,. You could write volumes about why they do.
So what happens now ? Will Flickr fans shun it ? They certainly didn’t when it was purchased by Yahoo – a company that also has its detractors.
Ultimately, the community (one that has uploaded 2 billion photos to Flickr) is in the driver’s seat.
Flickr and other community sites aren’t ‘the town square’.
They’re the people in the square – and they’re free to go where they please.
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Update: Wired.com has an article on rumblings in the Flickr community about the possibility of the MS acquisition. Laughing Squid also covers.
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(cross posted to Robert’s At Large Media blog)
Flickr Appreciates a Good Bit of Hands On
What does Flickr.com do when it’s feeling stressed and overwhelmed.
The same thing I do.
screen grab Sat. Jan 12 at 3:45 p.m. pacific time
Flickr Hits 2 Billion Photos Before Its 4th Birthday
Holy Moly indeed.
In the Flickr blog today they mention that they hit their 2-billionth upload. To get a sense of the sheer volume, just check the ‘explore’ function.
If you select “most recent uploads” Flickr tells you how many photos were uploaded in the last minute. I’m usually seeing numbers between 2,500 – 3,500. That means that in one hour, at the low end, there are 150,000 uploads. Over a day, even at the low end, that’s 3,600,000 photos uploaded.
At that rate, it would take over 555 days to hit 2-billion. Flickr’s been around longer than that of course, the URL was first registered 4 years ago this month. But obviously they had no-where near this kind of uptake in the early days, and these days, I’m sure they have days that go way over that low number I’m using.
It’s staggering to think about this kind of volume. And Flickr is just one of many photo-upload sites. Add in the social networking sites that also allow photo uploads, and you really have to be impressed with sheer volume of images being uploaded, stored, tagged and displayed.
We used to keep our photos in a shoe box in a closet somewhere – the more annoying members of my family held regular ‘slide nights’ when they’d show off their snaps from their latest trip to Minot. Essentially, our family photos quietly gathered dust somewhere.
Now, they’re on display for the world to see, and in some cases downloaded, not only by friends of family, but by total strangers. Sure there are a lot of budding photographer types who use Flickr as a giant sounding board for their work, but mostly, it’s just regular photos taken by regular folks. Some of them even on a trip to Minot.
Encourage that kind of behavious, and the next thing you know you’ve got 2-billion pictures on your hard drive.
Paris in the Spring Time
In 1977 I sold my 1966 Mustang for just enough money to buy a plane ticket to Paris. My high-school sweetheart K was working there as an au pair, and the trip from Calgary to Paris was my attempt to lure her back.
It didn’t work by the way.
However, it was April in Paris. I was 21. I was in love. Did I mention it was Paris in April ? Perfect. Well, with the small exception that K was more interested in, well, pretty much everyone else.
Still, it’s what Paris is about, isn’t it ? Unrequited love in a city of beautiful people who seem to be in no hurry to do anything but talk, smoke, drink coffee and embrace.
Like I said, perfect.
I had (and still have) a Canon F1 film camera, and I shot slides and some negative stock while I was there. The light was incredible
almost every time we went out, and the city made up (well, almost) for any heart ache I was suffering.
It’s true that almost every 2nd frame is a shot of K (standing in front of a fountain, waiting for a train, outside the Louvre, ironing…) but all these years later I’ve started scanning the other half of the slides and am enjoying the discoveries.
It was an important time in my life. I was young, I had my first really big job (running a newsroom in Calgary) and I was still naïve enough to believe that if I flew to Paris the woman I pined for would change her mind. All in all, perfect.
I’ll be adding the scans slowly to my Flickr Paris 1977 page, and your comments are welcome.