All About Content

When Google does an update you’d think the world was coming to an end based on the complaints of webmasters who lost their top 3 positions. And when Flickr changes its Interestingness algorithm (which determines the top 500 photos seen in Explore), the formerly-but-no-longer popular want to know what gives.

Well, three weeks ago, Flickr made a little change to its Interestingness algorithm. (The basics are well explained in this post on Flickr.com). And based on my analytics logs, people are searching for answers and stumbling upon this blog. So I’ll break my usual tradition of not providing answers to explain what happened.

If you’ve had lot of photos drop out of Interestingness, it’s because you participated in comment whoring groups.

A Flickr developer explains:

We’ve made some changes in interestingness algorithm last week to compensate inflation of activity metrics introduced by groups that force users to create comments and/or favorites before they allowed to post photos in the group.

Actually, they did more than “compensate.” They seem to have blackballed all the photos in those groups outright.

So how is a person supposed to get comments on a photo without submitting it to a bunch of groups? Not to worry, says Flickr’s SilentObserver,

Only groups that force people to comment/fave on certain photos with no choice, are affected by latest algorithm changes.

I, of course, participated in the comment whoring regularly, so all of my Explore photos (which wasn’t that many), save one, are out. Oh well. Sometimes it’s not about being popular. A few of the forced-comments groups provide really good feedback, so it’s worth belonging to some of them even if it no longer helps to achieve Interestingness.

And for the seriously obsessed, Bill Slawski, the web’s resident algo patent expert, uncovered some patent applications to help deconstruct the Interestingness methodology.

Senator Stevens, grossly misunderstanding a junior aide’s recommendation to try “Googlebombing” this campaign season, sets eBay headquarters ablaze Tuesday night. He missed his intended target by 11 miles,

Conspiracy theories about Internet abound, but here’s one that doesn’t involve Google in cahoots with the CIA or invading UFOs.

Based solely on an anonymous posting on Mark Cuban’s blog (Blog Maverick), industry is now discussing whether its possible that Google paid off media companies to keep them from going after its recently acquired video-sharing site YouTube on copyright issues.

An unnamed source emailed Cuban, who posted it on Blog Maverick as something he felt was semi-credible, to say that Google agreed to pay a flat $500 million to media companies that had wanted to sue YouTube for copyright infringement.

The media companies would turn their attention away from YouTube to pursue other multimedia sharing sites hosting copyrighted material. This would allow YouTube ample time to remove infringing material safe in the knowledge that their competitors won’t be able to keep offering the good stuff either. Because let’s face it, what draws traffic to YouTube and sites like it is not the home videos of cats doing somersaults but stuff that you really ought to be paying to see.

As for the second gunman… The deal would allegedly screw artists and performers out of their fair share of royalties and allow the media companies to pocket the entirety offer.

This theory comes right on the heels of 1) Cuban saying anyone who buys YouTube is a moron, and 2) Google buying YouTube.

So, the revised analysis is as follows: anyone who buys YouTube is a moron, unless they’ve already conspired with their would-be opponents beforehand.

Read the email to Cuban.

A previous Blog Maverick post on the subject:
The Coming Dramatic Decline of YouTube