Tip: Don’t overwhelm your contacts by uploading too many photos at once
Today I decided that having a perfectly accurate timeline in my flickr photostream really doesn’t matter as much as I originally thought it did. I’ve got thousands of future sets on my hard drive that aren’t completely finished (like umm, Defcon 15), but many of them are ready to upload. I couldn’t think of any real gain to sit on them, and I actually ended up realizing that it’s better not to upload giant sets at once.
Think about it…after receiving a notification that you’ve uploaded new photos, people only have so much attention before they’re forced to focus on other tasks. No matter how awesome each shot is in your 500 image set, most contacts will be overwhelmed by the amount of content you just threw at them. Uploading fewer images at once gives people more time to actually notice and absorb your work, which will increase the number of individual views and comments.
So what’s the "magic upload number"? I’ve got my photostream set up for small images + sets, which puts 16 images per page. Right now I’m aiming for 20-25, which gives me plenty of leeway to experiment in the 1 - 2 pages range.
6 Comments, Comment or Ping
David
I prefer bulk uploads in some ways. As a viewer, I’d rather devote a larger segment of time once in a while to going through photos rather than spend small chunks more frequently. I would think this method of consumption has benefits for the poster, as well. They could see which photos people actually stopped at in their browsing, knowing which of ones were the most attention grabbing.
Definitely worth a shot, though.
Feb 8th, 2008
Lisa Brewster
If the world were a perfect laboratory setting, I’d prefer that way, too. But in the real world, it’s an unfair experiment on the consumer. This is why I always have so many tabs open in Firefox…I see something interesting that I want to check out, but I don’t have time to do it right then. My theory is that I’ll leave the tab open to remember to come back to it later, but a lot of the time I’ll put it off until the reason why I found the page interesting in the first place is no longer relevant.
We’re dealing with information overload more and more every day. Until someone creates a universal notification system that can be tweaked to each user’s needs, a fair portion of responsibility still rests on the content creators to find out how much their audience wants at once.
Also…you track a lot less shit online than I do. =]
Feb 8th, 2008
David
I don’t track less. I just make it look easier.
This is a quality of traffic/consumption argument that won’t get solved here. We’ve been dealing with information overload since the 1920s, and the result of that is our context…the framework through which we see the world. The last true polymaths died out in the 1800s. Since then, we’ve had to pick and choose how we develop our minds. How we consume data says as much about us as what data we consume.
For the most part, I challenge sites like Slashdot that post so much content on their main page it’s impossible for someone with a day job to keep up with it all. Editors post duplicate articles without realizing it, proving that even they have trouble keeping up with everything. “News for nerds” has gained such a broad scope that it’s lost meaning.
That’s what this is about: meaning. When I spend time to look through a batch of photos, I want that to mean something more than part of my daily lap around the internet. Part of what makes photo blogging special is that it’s rare to find content I can engage myself in. If I get too bombarded with it, like Slashdot, it too will lose meaning.
I’m open to being proven wrong.
Feb 8th, 2008
Lisa Brewster
Unlike you, I find too MUCH content I want to engage myself in. Still, we’ve got one similar problem we’re trying to address: bombardment. The only tool I really have available at the moment to play with is rate limiting. Make me the tool that solves this problem by evaluating meaning and I’ll give you $100. I might, if you’re lucky, even get you an icon for it.
PS: I know there are existing applications working in this space, but I’ve not run across any yet that are more than a glorified feed reader. Not to mention that either all my friends have to use the same service (not likely), or I’d have to manually add all the content I want managed (too time consuming).
PPS: If you stay as abreast of the Internet as I do, how come I had to stop you from writing a replacement for SyncToy this morning? =]
Feb 8th, 2008
David
Bombardment isn’t something that will ever be solved with a tool or application. In a way, that’s asking computers to take over our lives, by deciding what’s important to us. It’s just a life skill to learn: What do you want to do? What do you want to accomplish? Answering those questions solves most bombardment issues.
PS: I didn’t say I stay as abreast as you. I said I just make it look easier. I do that by making you my feed reader. Thus, you give me context by deciding what’s important that I should look at, like SyncToy.
Feb 8th, 2008
Lisa Brewster
Yes it will. Didn’t I make you watch The Machine is Us/ing Us? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE
Web 2.0 is teaching the machine to understand ideas. The next step is teaching the machine to prioritize. Take my twitter checklist, for example. It clearly demonstrates the growing need for a personal information firewall. The smartest people are the ones who are dealing with this problem the most, so I guarantee it’ll be solved by somebody. It all boils down to designing a very clever decision tree. Thankfuly, computers are good at decision trees.
PS: Hmph…I hereby stand crowdsourced.
Feb 8th, 2008
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