What is interestingness?
The short answer is that it’s a way of measuring a photo’s popularity on Flickr.
The long answer is that nobody knows the exact formula for computing a photo’s interestingness. It’s a combination of number of views, number of times that someone marks the photo as a favorite, and number of times the photo is blogged or shared. But it’s not simply a matter of views or exposure. If a photo has been submitted to too many groups, it may affect the interestingness in a negative way. Similarly, it is thought that who views or favorites the photo may affect the interestingness rating. The number of views compared to other photos with the same tags is a factor. The quantity of comments is a factor (as well as who left those comments). All of this is time-related… a photo gathering 100 views in an hour is very different than a photo gathering 100 views in a month.
So… why does it matter? It really doesn’t. The primary use of interestingness is that Flickr features the 500 most interesting photos for a given day as part of the Explore section of their website. Post a good photo, get it noticed (so that it has a high interestingness factor) and you may find it featured in Flickr’s Explore section. Many folks (including myself) consider it a matter of pride to have a photo deemed interesting and featured in Explore.
If you want to see a bunch of photos featured in Explore, you can check out this Flickr group. You can also view a set of my photos which have been in Explore.
Photo by Aaron Hockley
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