The Internet Runs on Tits but it Won’t Pay For Them

June 22, 2009

Yesterday I had my “best” day on flickr by far.  1300 views in a day when I ordinarily average somewhere below 300.  A four fold increase over the course of 24 hours.  There are views on individual photos as well as sets and my photostream in general (people who are “just browsing”).  One might inquire why I had such a magnificent day in web statistics.  The answer is simple, I gave the viewing public what they wanted.

Hooters. Tits. Boobs. Jugs. Knockers. Garbanzos. Funbags.  That which brings all the boys to the yard.

Ain't she something fellas?

Saturday was the Mermaid Parade at Coney Island.  The Mermaid Parade means a lot of girls running around wearing not much more than body paint.  A lot of girls running around in bikinis or less means a lot of crowds and a lot of people with cameras.   The crowds are pretty thick so people rely on flickr and other photo aggregation sites to let them see what they missed.  As the above photograph had the greatest number of hits (by a factor of two over the next most popular photo, which also involved a girl in a swimsuit) it doesn’t take much imagination to determine what they feel they missed out on.  A glance at my most viewed photos on my flickr stream only confirms this.

I’m not proud of this nor am I dismayed.

Hit tracking is one of the tools that people can use to make decisions about the kind of content they’re trying to present to the public.  According to my hit tracking I should go out and take more color photographs of women in bikinis and burlesque performers.  A little investigation shows that I should go further and post photographs of women with no clothing on.  Preferably performing sexual acts.  An even deeper look would tell me that I can dispose with the need to take photos entirely and can simply repost pornography that I found elsewhere on the web.  This would maximize my hits and minimize my effort.  Yes, its a violation of copyright but who bothers with that these days.

Sex grabs eyeballs on the internet.  Its very difficult to get accurate statistics but I would not be surprised if the majority of the traffic on flickr is concentrated on their collection of amateur and pilfered commerical pornography.   Yet if you visit Flickr’s explore page which highlights its most “interesting” photos you’ll notice that there’s narry a nipple.   Instead you’re greeted with a variety of landscapes, portraits, macro shots, still lives, and the occasional travel or documentary photograph.

If flickr spends most of its processing time churning out blowjobs, why don’t they feature them?  Even behind a credit card based age verification system?  Why shouldn’t they cater to their adult users who obviously crave adult content.

Sex might get you a lot of views but it doesn’t sell.  The number of hits a piece of content might attract are also highly misleading as indicators of success.

Getting 1,000 hits on a saucy photograph of a well put together young lady may inflate my ego but it has never done anything for my career as a photographer.  Instead my collection of well tagged and carefully titled and described photographs of dancers and musicians have.  The number of hits on one of my shots of Vangeline Theater at the Howl Festival will never, ever come close to those of my most popular photo of a young lady in a seashell bikini that I took at my first Mermaid Parade but it has appeared in the NY Post, Time Out/NY, and was used by the Howl Festival to promote itself.  Based on sales and outside interest my most successful photographs are of local events and performers.

In terms of flickr’s revenue stream they’re well aware that the majority of the users who are primarily interested in pornography are not interested in becoming paid members.  They will gladly be subjected to ads in order to endlessly shift through content, delivering huge numbers of hits, consuming system resources, but generally not adding content of any value or otherwise meanfully contributing to the flickr community.   The people who do buy memberships are people who use flickr to share their work, help promote their creative endevors, and enhance the community by commening on other’s work, posting to groups, and pulling outside users into the website through search results and social networking.

In the end numbers mean very little unless you put them into context.  5000 views on a photograph is meaningless if it has never generated any interest in the rest of my work.  I’ve provided 4800 units of cheap thrill and perhaps 200 units of loving her outfit.  Similarly seeing someone with a million hits on their flickr account is equally meaningless.  Have those hits resulted in useful contacts?  Has it generated sales?  Does it enhance their networking efforts?  Do they even get a word of appreciation or just a rapidly spinning hit tracker that adds up to nothing?

…and my favorite photograph so far from the Mermaid Parade doesn’t involve any tits.

Looking for Sunshine, 2009 Mermaid Parade.

Posted in Technique, Theory