Imagine my excitement when I discovered that this photo that I took of my friend F.’s beaded knitting (orange pashmina that’s soft-soft-soft) made it into flickr.com’s Explore: the top 500 photos of the day. And from what I can discern, there are approximately 3000 images uploaded to their site every minute! At least, those are the stats every time I log on. From what I understand, flickr.com is the largest online photo storage service around. Accounts are free up to 250 photos. Try to upload the 251st and it’s time to pay! ($24.95/year) Once you upgrade to the ‘pro account’, there is no limit to the number of photos you can upload.
There’s this nifty little tool on a flickr-related site, Big Huge Labs, called Scout. In a matter of moments, Scout identifies which, if any, of the photos belonging to a specific account have made it into Explore. The photo above ranked #89 on November 20, 2007.
Another cool thing you can do with Scout is make a poster of your Explore-ranking photos. Here’s the one I made with my first six Explore photos as soon as I found out that I’d been granted membership into this very cool club!
It’s my understanding that you can upload as many pictures as you want with a free account but there is a limit to how many per month based on bandwidth usage. They have greatly increased that limit though when they made the pro accounts have unlimited upload. But last time I checked, only your last 100 pictures would show if you had a free account. The others are still there and searchable by tag but don’t show up in your stream. And you are limited to three sets with free and unlimited with pro. The sets did it for me. I’m in my 3rd year with flickr, from before yahoo bought them, and they have changed the rules some but I think that’s it currently.
BTW, Explore and Interestingness are chosen by a logarithm that isn’t exactly based on “best” pictures. They change it all the time but it usually has to do with how many views you have, how many comments you have, and how many faves you have but it takes into account where those views and faves come from. They automatically disqualify the picture if you put it in too many groups or if it is in groups that require you to comment on the pictures ahead of yours. It’s all kind of silly but fun.