Flickr Stats

Just a small reminder that from today, June 1, Flickr will stop delivering historical statistics data (hits, refferers, etc) for photos and videos and allow access only to the previous 28 days.

If you’re interested in keeping thesa data, and if for nothing else at least for historical reasons you should, relevant files can be downloaded either in CSV or Excel format for each month up to May 2010. I still can’t understand why files have to be downloaded one at a time and there is no option for bulk download (at least that I could find), but ok, better than nothing.

But you have to act fast, the files are only available until today, June 1, 12pm PDT (8pm GMT).

I’ve mentioned before that I’m not a big Flickr user. I’ve tried it just for some sample photos but never really got into it as a photography social network.

Nonetheless, I find it a powerful tool for photographers. The ability to share your work with thousands of users and (possibly) getting your name known as a photographer is a gift that I’m probably wasting.

And now it got even better with the ability to embed your photos on blog posts as easily as you embed a video from YouTube.

How to do this? Easy… There is a new tool out there at SlideFlickr.com that allows you to do just this.

On their site you just have to insert your flicker username or URL to your photos and click Generate. Grab the code, paste it on your post and that’s it…

Want a little bit more customization? No problem, SlideFlickr allows you to customize which photos to include (tags, sets, favorites), sizes, background color of the applet, logo and you can even load your slideshow with some music.

Basically it makes use of the slideshow functionality that currently already exists on Flickr but with an extra kick. And getting the code this easily is enough to be worth a try.

Want to see it in action? These are the only photos I’ve uploaded…

It has been a long time since I had the opportunity to write something to my readers. Thank you for sticking with me.

The reason? It’s in that logo on the left…

I’ve been busy setting up a new online venture: the Digital-Folders Network, a new blogging network.

What can I tell you about the network? If you are really curious just go there and look around. The fast version is that it is a place to gather a number of blogs, dedicated to the most varied subjects, and like-minded people.

Belonging to a blogging network has a huge influence on traffic levels and of course makes it much easier to sell advertising spots on a blog. Also, due to the fact that all the blogs abide by certain standards and policies, the “neighbors” are sure to be good.

We intend to bring into the network new and established blogs alike with the aim to cover a wide range of subjects.

Again, this was the quick version of it all. For more details it’s worth it to visit the site.

The Digital-Folders Network is aggressively “recruiting” blogs and bloggers to its realm and advertising campaigns have started to intensify the exposure of the network and of the blogs involved.

If you are interested in creating a new blog or optionally integrating your existent blog into a dynamic network be sure to visit the Bloggers Needed page where you can find more details about the requirements and advantages as well as apply for a position.

Domain and hosting are provided for you. So, what are you waiting for? This blog is already there

Until now, unlike Aperture users, Adobe Lightroom users could not upload directly to Flickr. Probably frustrating if you use both regularly.

Although I use Lightroom, Flickr is not one of my first choices of social photography sharing networks, so I never felt much the need for interaction between both.

For those of you who feel this pain on a daily basis, Xof at Digitalfreak.net reports a simple and easy to implement solution to export your photos to Flickr from Adobe Lightroom.

We all know that sharing our work with others and getting feedback is an excellent way not only to promote our brand (name) but also to improve our own technique and learn more and more about photography.

Yesterday I discussed the 5 Pros of Social Photography-Sharing Networks like flickr or photobucket. The good exposure, feedback, how good they are to increase the number of visitors to your own gallery, the easiness of the whole process and the fun that can be derived from them are the biggest advantages of such sites. But not everything is good in them for a photographer. Today I want to present my point-of-view on the bad sides of using social photography-sharing networks.

5 Cons of Social Photography-Sharing Networks

1. Bad Feedback – How useful is a comment on one of your photos like “Great shot” or “I don’t like it”? Sadly, not at all. Ok, a bunch of 3 word comments just praising your work can boost your ego, but what does that bring you? Not much. More in depth feedback from people who know what they are talking about is not so easy to come by. You can get it though, but either you develop contacts or it will be by sheer luck. Getting 100+ comments on one of your photos is only good if you can take something out of them.
2. Anonymous exposure – We have seen before that you can get enormous exposure from social photography-sharing networks. But how good is this exposure? There are a few success stories like Rebekka’s or Heather’s but this is definitely the exception. Your work is seen and commented, but if you are doing it with some commercial objective in mind you’ll have a long way to go.
3. 1 Page visitors – You can get a regular stream of visitors to your website gallery from flickr and alike, but how good are they as visitors? Usually they tend to fall into what I like to call the “1 page visitors”: they follow your link, reach the landing page, and unless you have something extremely attractive, they go away (maybe is just a problem of my gallery). Does the number of return visitors (the ones that really count for any website) match the increase in traffic coming from social photography sharing networks? Probably not. But hey, it’s still good to see some people coming to look at your work.
4. No control on layout – It’s really very easy to assemble your gallery on flickr or photobucket but any control you may wish on the general layout is gone. You can’t decide how the surroundings of your works are going to look and some photos only come up to their true potential as art with a suitable surrounding (why do you think galleries have specialized people to do this for them?).
5. Copyright issues – On flickr, you can choose a creative commons license with which to release your work. Some users allow sharing with attribution, allow editing, etc., but there are also users whose work is released with all rights reserved. In this case, you can only use the photos with authorization from the author. Problem is, not many people care about it and photos are being “stolen” all the time. You might not want your best shots to show up on some sleazy website without attribution (or with attribution, for all that matters). You can read more about flickr and the law here.

Now that both sides of the story have been exposed, I think we can conclude that the decision to use social photography-sharing networks depends on what your objectives are. It has pros and cons and it’s up to each individual to address the if and the how to use them in order to get the most success for your work and improvements to yourself as a photographer.

Are your ideas similar to mine? Share with us your thoughts on how you see the use of social photography-sharing networks.

EDIT (2007.05.14): Concerning the 5th topic I mentioned, Copyright issues, there was a story coming up today about a photographer being ripped of her work without compensation. Read it here.

The advent of social networks has been a huge buzz around the internet for years. Primarily through open forums and later in sites like digg.com, del.icio.us, and of course the latest photographyVoter.com (dedicated to photography), social networking has fulfilled a gap that existed for long: the ability to judge internet content. Also, finding like-minded individuals allows for a great exchange of ideas and discussion.

Social photography-sharing networks are a slice of this pie. In sites like flickr and photobucket anyone can upload their work and open it to the masses. Like mostly everything, these social photography-sharing networks have advantages and disadvantages. In this post I’ll cover what are for me the main 5 advantages of uploading your work to social networks.

5 Pros of Social Photography-Sharing Networks

1. Exposure – Your photos don’t need to rest in the hard-drive anymore without anyone to look at them. These networks allow for it to go global. Thousands of people can look at your work and admire what you can do with a camera. Your name in photography can be known.

2. Feedback – You think your photos are good. But does everyone else? Commenting on posted work is a very much used feature on these sites. You’ll receive feedback from potentially thousands of other users, and some comments can help you improve your technique and generally advance your knowledge on photography.

3. Visitors – With some of your photos in the social networks, if you edit your profile well and make it interesting, with a link to your main gallery outside the social network, you can get traffic to your own website.

4. Easiness – How more easy can it be? Tell the site where your photos are on your physical drive, add tags and descriptions and the site does everything else for you. Very soon you’ll see your photos displayed on your own gallery with everything else setup for you.

5. Fun – Interacting with other people is fun. Tracking the works of friends or users who’s work you admire is fun. Joining groups inside the social network and exchanging ideas and discussing projects is fun.

I hope this list has helped you see the good side about social photography-sharing networks. But not everything is this sweet. There is a dark side to it too.

Tomorrow I will post again addressing this issue but I’ll be looking at it from the other side with the 5 Cons of Social Photography-Sharing Networks.

And you? Do you use any of the most popular social photography-sharing networks? What do you see as the main advantages of such sites?