Really, my photography is not that good.
February 11, 2012 1:37 PM Subscribe
Who or what would want to visit every photo in my Flickr photostream?
Flickr has a nice little stats page where you can view activity on your account. My account usually averages somewhere in the 50-80 hits a day range - a couple photos seem to be search engine favorites, a couple pervs seem to have photos in their Flickr "favorites", people randomly search for terms and my stuff pops up. I just noticed, however, a HUGE spike of activity on Feb. 5th.
I can't link you directly to my stats page, so here's a screen capture for the date. You'll also notice that no photo was visited more that 4 times., so it's not like a photo I took suddenly struck Fark's fancy or something. You'll notice an "unknown source" accounted for 6,065 hits. My entire photostream contains only 6,181 photos (25 of which were uploaded after the 5th) leaving roughly 100 photos, which sounds about like the number that are probably "friends only".
It appears that the "unknown source" visited every picture in my photostream. It's hard to believe a human would do that - there are some really awful photographs in there that would only be of interest if you knew the people or events involved. (What human would care about this and this and this, aside from, well, me?) I assume that this was some sort of bot. Any thoughts as to who or what would do this and why? Advice for ways to backtrack where this traffic came from? This is purely for my own curiousity - I don't mind, persay, but it's weird.
Flickr has a nice little stats page where you can view activity on your account. My account usually averages somewhere in the 50-80 hits a day range - a couple photos seem to be search engine favorites, a couple pervs seem to have photos in their Flickr "favorites", people randomly search for terms and my stuff pops up. I just noticed, however, a HUGE spike of activity on Feb. 5th.
I can't link you directly to my stats page, so here's a screen capture for the date. You'll also notice that no photo was visited more that 4 times., so it's not like a photo I took suddenly struck Fark's fancy or something. You'll notice an "unknown source" accounted for 6,065 hits. My entire photostream contains only 6,181 photos (25 of which were uploaded after the 5th) leaving roughly 100 photos, which sounds about like the number that are probably "friends only".
It appears that the "unknown source" visited every picture in my photostream. It's hard to believe a human would do that - there are some really awful photographs in there that would only be of interest if you knew the people or events involved. (What human would care about this and this and this, aside from, well, me?) I assume that this was some sort of bot. Any thoughts as to who or what would do this and why? Advice for ways to backtrack where this traffic came from? This is purely for my own curiousity - I don't mind, persay, but it's weird.
Are you sure they were hitting every phot and not just one photo a LOT of times? Usually this happens when some high traffic site hotlinks to one image and not the page it's on. My understanding, and I may be wrong, is that if I just linked to a photo of yours like this that flickr would increment it as a view but it would not show up in the referrer logs. If it helps, I had a similar traffic spike on the 28th of January, nearly identical.
posted by jessamyn at 1:47 PM on February 11, 2012
posted by jessamyn at 1:47 PM on February 11, 2012
Same thing happened to me and still don't know why.
posted by blaneyphoto at 1:48 PM on February 11, 2012
posted by blaneyphoto at 1:48 PM on February 11, 2012
A similar thing happened to me on January 29th. I know it's happened at least one other time and Flickr blamed it on some sort of reporting error.
(and now you'll see another spike as we all look through your excellent photostream...)
posted by bondcliff at 1:54 PM on February 11, 2012 [1 favorite]
(and now you'll see another spike as we all look through your excellent photostream...)
posted by bondcliff at 1:54 PM on February 11, 2012 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Happened to me too - same 10 photos visited hundreds of times a day for several days. The consensus on the Help Forum posts was that it was some kind of bot that got stuck for some reason (for example). Seems to be happening a lot on Flickr recently, although whether that is something to do with Flickr, or a new type of bot, no one seems to know.
posted by carter at 1:55 PM on February 11, 2012
posted by carter at 1:55 PM on February 11, 2012
Almost certainly something automated, like a crawler bot, probably the Google image bot.
A search for "rhodococci naphthalene site:flickr.com" in Google images shows the first image indicating that Google did spider at least that image. It probably crawled your entire stream.
posted by justkevin at 2:05 PM on February 11, 2012 [1 favorite]
A search for "rhodococci naphthalene site:flickr.com" in Google images shows the first image indicating that Google did spider at least that image. It probably crawled your entire stream.
posted by justkevin at 2:05 PM on February 11, 2012 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: jessamyn, blaneyphoto, and bondcliff having similar experience confirms my suspicion that it was a bot (which is still a little weird, but less weird that the most thorough stalker ever).
carter - I had something similar happen with that too. I thought maybe someone had put it on automatic rotation through something like Windows Live background. It last roughly a week and then stopped.
jessamyn - Yeah, it's not just one photo a lot of times. If you look at the screenshot, you can see that the most hits a single photo got that day was 4. (It's on the lower left, not very well labeled in that screenshot, sorry). Plus there's not obvious source - I've had a photo get picked up by Bostonist and the stats page recognized that most of the hits were coming from there. In some cases, I can tell someone is clicking through from Google Reader or their Flickr front page. On the other hand, if I emailed a link to this page and someone opened it from Gmail, it would probably show up as "unknown source". At least, that's my recollection from sending a friend's mom photos, for example.
For example, if I had some sort of blackout and looked at today's results, I'd be wondering why so many folks from Metafilter were looking at a goofy picture of my dad. (Actually, interestingly, in that shot you can see a tiny 1-hit blip in the otherwise dead activity on that photo for 2/5).
justkevin - And amusingly, a Google Image search turns up that photo and the thumbnails on that photo's page. So now my childhood cat and DDR are forever linked with Rhodococci. Is there any way of determining when Google cached a page?
posted by maryr at 2:15 PM on February 11, 2012
carter - I had something similar happen with that too. I thought maybe someone had put it on automatic rotation through something like Windows Live background. It last roughly a week and then stopped.
jessamyn - Yeah, it's not just one photo a lot of times. If you look at the screenshot, you can see that the most hits a single photo got that day was 4. (It's on the lower left, not very well labeled in that screenshot, sorry). Plus there's not obvious source - I've had a photo get picked up by Bostonist and the stats page recognized that most of the hits were coming from there. In some cases, I can tell someone is clicking through from Google Reader or their Flickr front page. On the other hand, if I emailed a link to this page and someone opened it from Gmail, it would probably show up as "unknown source". At least, that's my recollection from sending a friend's mom photos, for example.
For example, if I had some sort of blackout and looked at today's results, I'd be wondering why so many folks from Metafilter were looking at a goofy picture of my dad. (Actually, interestingly, in that shot you can see a tiny 1-hit blip in the otherwise dead activity on that photo for 2/5).
justkevin - And amusingly, a Google Image search turns up that photo and the thumbnails on that photo's page. So now my childhood cat and DDR are forever linked with Rhodococci. Is there any way of determining when Google cached a page?
posted by maryr at 2:15 PM on February 11, 2012
Might you get a similar effect if someone opened a slideshow in a tab and then forgot about it? I have open tabs I haven't switched to in months.
posted by Iteki at 2:56 PM on February 11, 2012
posted by Iteki at 2:56 PM on February 11, 2012
Um.
I do that sort of thing.
No, its actually not creepy, and there's nothing stalkerish about it.
Sometimes I'll do a google image search, for example? Searching for pictures of sunflowers or whatever else. If a picture that I really like pops up, sometimes I'll wander that person's flickr (or photobucket, or tumblr, or whatever) to see what else they've posted. Sure, there will be pictures of people I don't know, but maybe there'll be some adorable pet pics or more of whatever it was I searched for that led me to their page in the first place.
Granted, if something really strikes me I tend to send a message if I'm able, just to let them know that X picture was really spiffy and thanks for sharing it publicly.
posted by myShanon at 3:02 PM on February 11, 2012 [2 favorites]
I do that sort of thing.
No, its actually not creepy, and there's nothing stalkerish about it.
Sometimes I'll do a google image search, for example? Searching for pictures of sunflowers or whatever else. If a picture that I really like pops up, sometimes I'll wander that person's flickr (or photobucket, or tumblr, or whatever) to see what else they've posted. Sure, there will be pictures of people I don't know, but maybe there'll be some adorable pet pics or more of whatever it was I searched for that led me to their page in the first place.
Granted, if something really strikes me I tend to send a message if I'm able, just to let them know that X picture was really spiffy and thanks for sharing it publicly.
posted by myShanon at 3:02 PM on February 11, 2012 [2 favorites]
btw if you wander aimlessly through flickr pages, you can find some amazing photographers... as well as a few amatuers who just got a lucky shot that turned out to be breathtaking.
posted by myShanon at 3:05 PM on February 11, 2012
posted by myShanon at 3:05 PM on February 11, 2012
Maybe it's in our blood, but I do the same thing as myShanon.
I see one thing I like and I'll spend a whole afternoon looking through one person's Flickr set. Especially if I'm sick and have to sit on the couch. Super especially if the person has the same taste as me and lives in a city I love.
posted by TooFewShoes at 3:19 PM on February 11, 2012 [1 favorite]
I see one thing I like and I'll spend a whole afternoon looking through one person's Flickr set. Especially if I'm sick and have to sit on the couch. Super especially if the person has the same taste as me and lives in a city I love.
posted by TooFewShoes at 3:19 PM on February 11, 2012 [1 favorite]
BTW, that is an adorable picture of your dad! Looking at pictures of strangers can be the same as sitting in a crowded park and people watching. Except I can do it in my pajamas and without getting sunburnt.
posted by TooFewShoes at 3:21 PM on February 11, 2012 [2 favorites]
posted by TooFewShoes at 3:21 PM on February 11, 2012 [2 favorites]
Ha! I'm jschumacher on that help forum thread you linked to. Given that this pattern is systematic and occurring to many Flickr users it has to be a web crawler of some sort.
Beyond that it is hard to say what is going on. Web crawlers don't necessarily transmit referer information because they aren't coming to Flickr from any particular web page. Anyone that looks at your photos from a link contained in an email isn't going to leave referer information either. From what I've seen search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. are good about transmitting referer information if that information is available. The source could be a crawler from a start-up or someone, like a prof or grad student, doing some sort of research. On the other hand it could also be someone or something with a whole lot of storage capacity capturing all the images on Flickr.
posted by plastic_animals at 3:28 PM on February 11, 2012
Beyond that it is hard to say what is going on. Web crawlers don't necessarily transmit referer information because they aren't coming to Flickr from any particular web page. Anyone that looks at your photos from a link contained in an email isn't going to leave referer information either. From what I've seen search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. are good about transmitting referer information if that information is available. The source could be a crawler from a start-up or someone, like a prof or grad student, doing some sort of research. On the other hand it could also be someone or something with a whole lot of storage capacity capturing all the images on Flickr.
posted by plastic_animals at 3:28 PM on February 11, 2012
1. Bot. 2. Reporting error. 3. I have paged through entire accounts one photo at a time, and I am neither a bot nor a mathematical anomaly.
posted by goblinbox at 4:15 PM on February 11, 2012 [2 favorites]
posted by goblinbox at 4:15 PM on February 11, 2012 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: myShanon and TooFewShoes (who has some cat-oriented pictures coming her way soon): I do that as well - I mean, find a random photo and look through a photostream. That said, I tend to skip around some - for example, it turns out that photos of sports games are really boring to look through, even if you're a fan of the team or you were even at the game. So after looking at some pictures, I sometimes go up to the photostream itself or I use the in "photo" navigation to skip ahead some. Also, I tend to find at least one photo I feel is worth commenting on. In this case, I assumed it was a bot since literally every photo seems to have been clicked on. In one day. 6,000 of them. With no feedback. That just seemed like... persistence.
posted by maryr at 4:36 PM on February 11, 2012
posted by maryr at 4:36 PM on February 11, 2012
Have you started dating someone new, by any chance? I can imagine (ahem) having the urge to look at every. single. photo. posted by a new love interest, in attempt to gain some insight into them, and not comment because I didn't want to draw attention to my possibly stalkerish seeming behavior.
posted by bobafet at 5:15 PM on February 11, 2012 [2 favorites]
posted by bobafet at 5:15 PM on February 11, 2012 [2 favorites]
I had a spike on January 29th too. No single photo got more than a few hits, but from the total number, just about every photo got viewed. it seems unlikely that we all got one-day stalkers recently. Bot makes way more sense.
posted by teg at 5:44 PM on February 11, 2012
posted by teg at 5:44 PM on February 11, 2012
Same for me on January 8th. I've had a lot of flickr stalkers but I've never had as high a stat as that day, and it was all evenly spread across my photostream, so I also figure it's a bot. Glad you asked this!
posted by beyond_pink at 5:48 PM on February 11, 2012
posted by beyond_pink at 5:48 PM on February 11, 2012
Who or what would want to visit every photo in my Flickr photostream?
Artists.
You wouldn't believe the countless number of "boring" or "weird" photos I've searched through to find just the right texture/pose/lighting/mood/color/etc reference for some project I'm working on.
posted by Squee at 5:57 PM on February 11, 2012 [2 favorites]
Artists.
You wouldn't believe the countless number of "boring" or "weird" photos I've searched through to find just the right texture/pose/lighting/mood/color/etc reference for some project I'm working on.
posted by Squee at 5:57 PM on February 11, 2012 [2 favorites]
Just to say the picture of your dad in his apron is so lovely it almost breaks my heart. You can see the genuine affection in his face. OK, I'll stop flickr stalking now.
posted by everydayanewday at 9:46 PM on February 11, 2012
posted by everydayanewday at 9:46 PM on February 11, 2012
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by joyeuxamelie at 1:42 PM on February 11, 2012