I’ve been obsessed with Flickr since Veken convinced me to ditch the prettier but less sophisticated Picasa for the Yahoo-owned service in 2007. Other than entertaining me for hours on end I have also learned a lot about the Flickr users and I thought I’d share these tinkets of knowledge (some obvious, some inexplicable).
Well, first of all, here’s my top 10 viewed images as of today (January 19, 2009):
| Rank | Photo Title | Thumbnail | Total Views | Date Uploaded |
| 1 | José Campeche, “Niño Juan Pantaléon Avilés” (1808) |  |
2,001 | 12/05/2007 |
| 2 | A A Bronson’s “School For Young Shamans” at John Connelly Presents |  |
988 | 01/10/2008 |
| 3 | Cockfighting at Club Gallistico (San Juan, Puerto Rico) |  |
832 | 12/04/2007 |
| 4 | Hipsters Vote for McCain Ironically |  |
662 | 10/02/2008 |
| 5 | Francisco Oller, “Piñas” (1890) |  |
619 | 12/05/2007 |
| 6 | Paintings by Sarah Maple at Whitebox |  |
455 | 06/14/2008 |
| 7 | Cockfighting at Club Gallistico (San Juan, Puerto Rico) |  |
377 | 12/13/2007 |
| 8 | Ramón Frade, “El pan nuestro” (1905) |  |
344 | 12/05/2007 |
| 9 | “Grover Cleveland” by Anders Zorn (1899) |  |
328 | 04/24/2008 |
| 10 | Francisco de Zurbarán “Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose” (1633) |  |
325 | 02/10/2008 |
So what does this all mean? Well, first the predictable stuff:
- shock value gets you stats (as anyone who has blogged with the word sex or butt-plug in a title knows);
- the word “cock” (even cockfighting it seems) and search phrases like “glory hole” and “anonymous bathroom sex” (even if they are in reference to a Chelsea art exhibition curated by AA Bronson) do wonders for your stats;
- nudity, another stat magnet;
- timeliness helps, while my #4 is the newest image on the list the fact that it references an episode of Stephen Colbert (I uploaded it from my iPhone the same night) and McCain (it was election season) gave it a big boost but I suspect that it will drop off by the top 10 by the end of the year…but the fact that it even made it this high baffles me to no end; and
- controversy helps, for instance, the paintings of Sarah Maple were nowhere near the top 10 until some British Muslim group wanted them banned or censored.
Some surprises:
- Three Puerto Rican art works are among my top ten, and five of my top ten are from my trip to Puerto Rico in December 2007;
- Zurbarán is popular, who knew;
- none of my top 10 is street art (the first one comes in at #51, and that’s a street artist exhibiting in a gallery, the first unsanctioned street art work comes in at #60, correction–there is one small unsanctioned street art work that comes in at #19); and
- while I had never heard of Francisco Oller before and not only does he have an image in my top 10 but he clocks in at #11, just shy of this list.
Some other stats…my 3,361 public photos have received 111,948 views.
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