Exploring Interestingness on Flickr


I've never gone through the Explore section on Flickr before. I just checked it out, and holy crap! Interestingness everywhere! There are some absolutely amazing photos on Flickr!

What they've done is come up with a great way to mine user-generated data to provide a view onto their database that is much richer than any taxonomy-based scheme would allow - "interestingness" is defined on the fly by the users of the system, and the parameters change constantly.

There is a calendar view, so you can see "interesting" photos from any date you like, or you can use the "last 24 hours" view to see recent stuff.

Some of the better shots from the last 24 hours:
Canal Street, Fridaysome sunsetHurricane Katrina NewbornBurj Al ArabFanning outOutside Bodie's Church

And some from June (admittedly, I was looking to see if some of my shots were in the "interesting" list, but couldn't find any)
underneathNambikwara ChiefOngoing StreamYuanAn African SunsetWhite knuckle thrill rideLoaded downMorning WalkSpritual StairsGiraffes-sunsetA windowthe old lady and the street

I could go on, and on, and on...

This whole making-sense-of-stuff-without-rigidly-structured-metadata thing is kinda fun!

It would be even cooler if the Flickr Gods had provided an RSS feed for the "10 most interesting photos in the last 24 hours"...

Update: Steeev has set up a hacked RSS feed for the "interestingness" stream! Thanks, Steeev!


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