Explore me!

Flickr has this strange thing they call Explore. After a twisted set of calculations to do with which groups your photo is in, how many groups, how many tags, links to/from the photos, comments, favourites, views... they eventually class all photos by Interestingness. And if a photo is one of the 500 most Interesting for a particular day then it gets into Explore, which is like a showcase for the most Interesting pictures of the day.

Some people are Explore whores. All sorts of Groups exist for no reason other than to have more Groups to add photos to, in the hopes that enough Groups will guarantee a place in Explore. What many people don't seem to realise, of course, is that the Interestingness algorithms are constantly changing and since 2006 having a photo in more than 15 Groups (oh yes, some pictures are in 60+ Groups! I did say WHORE.) then it has a negative effect on the Interestingness. Fools.

My Mother has had a few pictures Explored, although they're all pictures of clouds and trees and other boring 'nature' stuff; she's as puzzled by this as I am. I finally entered Explore a couple of months ago - about time too - and was frightfully pleased when this photo went from posting to Explore in about 12hours:

See, I decided to do the 365 thing, and then found myself getting dragged into the Flickr Group Roulette Group, which challenges you to make your photo of the day fit into certain underpopulated Groups - in this case, Flickr Can Has Cheezburger which is for Flickr lolcats. I baulked at the idea, but eventually managed to do something (entailing the vile Comic Sans MS, which apparently people liked :D