EXPLORED ON FLICKR

Tertulien at the Beach (#2), originally uploaded by rippo.

For several years now I've been trying to figure out how flickr's Explore feature on their website works. They explain that it's a magic donkey that picks the photos to feature in Explore. The photo above is one such photo that I found while browsing today's Explore page. Obviously super interesting and worthy of the highest flickr praise.

The mystery isn't so much how do your photos end up being Explored but rather how do you know when a photo of yours has been explored??? I've always been certain that at least ONE of my photos must have made it into the Explored system but never knew how to confirm it. Flickr does not send you any notices when a photo of yours is featured on Explore... no internal flickr mail, no email, no magic asterisk on your Explore worthy photo... nothing. It's up to you to figure it out.

Many flickr users have sets where they feature their Explored photos... how did they know??? Do they sit there and look at EVERY SINGLE Explored photo each day? I bet some people actually do that. No way, not everyone does that. There's too many people with sets showing their Explored photos. There must be a better way.

Today I finally got off my butt and typed into google "how do you find out if your photo has been Explored on flickr?" The best answer I found came from the Big Huge Labs website. They are a company makes all sorts of flickr integrated web apps. One such feature on their site is Scout.

With Scout all you do is type in your flickr username and it will tell you if you have any current or dropped Explore photos. I guess if your photo is added to Explore for a certain day there is no guarantee it will stay up. All the photos uploaded that day fluctuate in "interestingness" depending on how many people view the photo and comment on it and such.

It turns out ONE of my photos was featured at some point in the Explore set for September 15th, 2007. The photo has since dropped in popularity or "interestingness" so it is no longer on Explore... but for at least a brief moment in time it was there. Here is that photo...