Download - Intro to Social Software Flickr › lib › iteach-2007 › flickr.pdf · 2007-05-23 · Social Software With Flickr Page 144 Continuing our examination of social soft ware features

Intro to Social SoftwareFlickr

Center for Distance Education & Independent Learning

Social Software With Flickr

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Page 137Center for Distance Education & Independent Learning


Abstract:

A general introduction to social soft ware— concepts, characteristics, and aff ordances— using the Flickr photo sharing web service as an exemplar.

Table of ContentsWhat is Social Soft ware? .............................................................................. RegistrationPhotos and Tags ....................................................................... Tags and Folksonomies ................................................................................ Comments and Discussion ......................................................................... Blogging with Flickr ..................................................................................... Notes/Annotations ....................................................................................... Sets and Slideshows ...................................................................................... Flickr Groups .............................................................................................. Feeds and Syndication ................................................................................. Creative Commons ...................................................................................... Th ird Party Applications ............................................................................. Conclusion and Further Resources ............................................................

Intro to Social Software with FlickrChris Lott



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Social soft ware is an umbrella term for a range of soft ware applications centered around communication and sharing of information and resources. It has been variously charac-terized as:

[Soft ware that] enables people to rendezvous, connect or collaborate through computer-mediated communication and to form online communities.

—Wikipedia

...a particular sub-class of soft ware-prosthesis that concerns it-self with the augmentation of human social and/or collaborative abili-ties through structured mediation (this mediation may be distributed or centalised, top-down or bottom-up/emergent).

—Tom Coates

Any arbitrary collection of algorithms, protocols and meta-data that allows friendless agoraphobics to pretend otherwise.

—Clay Shirky

But my favorite, and one that is both funny and completely accurate at capturing the es-sence of social soft ware is simply this:

Stuff that can get spammed.

—Clay Shirky

Simply put, social soft ware is that which not only allows communication, but also outside contributions, all in service of creating and sustaining a community. Th ose contributions must matter or there’d be no point in “spamming” the site or service (nor anyone reading it to care).

In this article we will examine more closely the concepts and characteristics common to most social soft ware applications and the aff ordances they provide for educators using fl ickr, a popular popular photo sharing web service.

Th is is not a general guide to using fl ickr and photo sharing, so it doesn’t address many is-sues such as digital formats and photo resolution, nor does it detail many interesting fl ickr technical features, such as automatic resizing.

What is Social Software?



If you don’t already have one, you can get your own free fl ickr account by following the Sign Up link on the front page. Anyone ready for this tutorial has signed up for a web-based service before, so I’m not going to go into the details.

For our purposes, the free account level is more than adequate. If you become a regular fl ickr user, particularly for multiple classes, you might start to chafe at the limitations on how much you can upload per month and how many “sets” of photos you can maintain. In this case you might consider a diff erent fl ickr account for each class or simply upgrading to the practically unlimited Pro account for a reasonable yearly fee.

Photos and TagsIn its basic functionality, fl ickr resembles many other web-based photo album packages. Using the Upload link at the top of the page allows you to upload multiple images from your computer. However, unlike many applications the fi rst piece of information you are asked to provide for the photos isn’t a title or description, but tags.

Tags function a bit like ad-hoc, un-limited categories for your photos. In the example I’ve tagged the new photo with four tags:

monkey

clips

ITS

Because I am creating these “catego-ries” on the fl y for my personal use, it’s perfectly acceptable to use tags that probably only make sense to me in my particular context, such as ITS.

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Figure 1. Uploading Photos

Registration



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Tags and FolksonomiesA major characteristic that identifi es Flickr as social soft ware rather than just a photo gallery application is the use of tags for organizing photos. As opposed to controlled vocabularies, taxonomies, and other pre-defi ned hierarchies that are established from the top-down and within which units of information (in this case, photos) are categorized, tags are bottom-up descriptors created on-the-fl y to meet individual needs. Used in this way, tagging systems are oft en referred to as folksonomies.

Figure 2. Title, Description, Tag Modifi cation

Figure 3. Flickr Photos Page

Once fi nished, uploaded photos appear on the main Photos page.

Only aft er submit-ting the photos to my account do I get a chance to add the more traditionally descriptive title and description.

Photos and Tags



If this sounds like a recipe for chaos and imprecision, you’re right. Th e power of folk-sonomies are in their simplicity, ease of use, and personalization-- which all combine to make tagging something people are more likely to use than formal methods of organiza-tion (though there is no reason that any particular item can’t exist in both systems). It is a fuzzy, inexact system where some information is lost and some unrelated information is intermixed... but as you will see it is also powerful, ubiquitous, and fun!

Figure 4. Flickr Individual Photo Page

Figure 5. Flickr Individual Tag Page

Look at an individual photo page in fl ickr and on the right-hand you’ll see the tags that have been assigned to that photo.

Selecting the tag name itself will show you all photos in that account us-ing that tag. For example, clicking on the tag monkey shows all monkey photos

Tags and Folksonomies



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Simply browsing tags can be interesting and enlightening, but it’s not particularly effi cient. A second characteristic of many kinds of social soft ware is that it recognizes the activity of users in relation to the units of information (photos) and uses that activity data to identify items that are more likely to be relevant. Th e assumption is that photos which have more individual views, comments, and links by users are more likely to be relevant. Th is selec-tion of items might be referred to as popular, notable, hot, or in fl ickr’s case interesting, as you can see by following the “Most Interesting” link on the global tags page (Figure 6, “Flickr All Tag Page”):

Th e concept of “inter-estingness” is useful, to really take advantage of a folksonomy there must also be a system for handling multiple kinds of similarity.

As you will see browsing around on fl ickr, there will be many diff erent kinds of photos with similar content, but diff erent tags, such as:

Similarly, clicking on the small globe icon next to a tag (or following the “See all public photos” link highlighted in red above) will show you all public photos in fl ickr that are tagged monkey:

Figure 6. Flickr All Tag Page

Figure 7. Flickr Interesting Tag Page




chimpanzee, monkeys (plural), monkee (possibly a misspelling, also a pop-culture refer-ence), spidermonkey, etc. Th is is tag similarity.

At the same time, you might stumble across photos that use similar tags to label diff er-ent content. In our case, the tag monkey will reveal photos of the animal, pieces of art that involve monkeys, “sock-monkey” puppets, clothing, kitchenware, and more. Th is is conceptual similarity.

Finally, photos that share a tag-similarity might also have other tags in common... for instance, many items tagged monkey are also tagged graffi ti and/or art and/or painting (which might, themselves, exhibit tag-similarity), creating a potential group based on relational similarity.

All of this leads us to another characteristic of social soft ware: the algorithmic association of similarity, or as fl ickr calls it, clustering. Following the “Clusters” link on the left -hand side of a tag page (Figure 7, “Flickr Interesting Tag Page”, yellow highlight) allows us to browse using these diff erent notions of similarity:

As you can see, organizing information with tags is a fl exible and powerful system that is particularly apt for computer-based interpretation. Tags provide a simple, direct route to information one seeks; the individual nature of tags and tag clustering provide a more circuitous route that allows for conceptual groupings that you won’t see in more rigid systems, not to mention invaluable moments of serendipity and juxtaposition.

Figure 8. Flickr Interesting Tag Page




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Continuing our examination of social soft ware features in fl ickr, we now come to one of the most obvious: user contributions. Although not a full-fl edged message board or blog-ging tool in itself, by default every individual photo page is available for comments by any fl ickr user. While browsing I decided to comment on this photo (lower left , highlighted):

Figure 10. Photo with Comments and Permalink

Figure 9. Commenting on a Photo

Once the comment is saved it is available for everyone to see and, if they wish, respond. In this way, each fl ickr photo is essentially a miniature bulletin board (a classic example of social soft ware). Because social soft ware puts an emphasis on this kind of interaction, each contribution has a permalink associated with it, which allows one to link directly to that entry when referring to it in other re-sources, such as one’s blog:

Comments and Discussion



Speaking of blogs-- the quintessential current example of social soft ware-- it’s a good mo-ment to note that fl ickr has been designed to integrate directly with them in a couple of ways.

A fl ickr badge allows you to embed a group of recent pictures from your fl ickr account directly into your blog. You create the badge by choosing a format, color scheme, and source (all public photos, a particular tag, set, etc) for the photos and embedding the resulting code directly in your blog. Your “badge” is updated automatically everytime you add new pictures to fl ickr. For example, on the right-hand side of this education-al blog you can see a “badge” showing the most recent student photos:

Th e automated “badge” is great for keeping a blog fresh, but you might want to use specifi c pictures in a blog with associated thoughts and commentary... in other words, use a fl ickr photo as part of a traditional blog entry. Fortunately, fl ickr makes this quite easy. On the individual photo page of any public photo you’ve probably noticed the photo toolbar:

Assuming you have set up one or more blogs on your fl ickr account page, you can use the toolbar to automatically create a blog entry, including the photo, in whichever blog you choose. Begin by pressing the Blog Th is toolbar button and selecting the blog you wish to post to:

Figure 11. Example of a Flickr “Badge”

Figure 12. Flickr Photo Toolbar

Figure 13. Photo Blogging: Choose Blog

Blogging with Flickr



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Press the Post Entry button and wait for the posting to be generated and sent to your blog. Th is might take a few seconds depending on the connection speed between fl ickr and your blog. When the post is complete you will be shown a confi rmation screen with a link to view your post.:

Using the fi elds provided enter a title and the text for your blog post.

Figure 14. Photo Blogging: Create Post

Figure 15. Photo Blogging: Confi rmation




Notes/AnnotationsOne of the oft en unnoticed social features in fl ickr is the ability to add multiple notes (annotations) directly to specifi c regions of an image. Th is kind of direct image annotation is practically impossible in a typical blog, wiki, or discussion forum. By default, the owner of a photo can add notes as can any of the owner’s established contacts. Th e ability to make notes can be expanded to any fl ickr user or narrowed to an even more specifi c audience such as friends and family, or no one else at all.

You can use the Visit Your Blog link to view your blog entry. If you use tags, categories, and other post-specifi c features you may need to edit the post further, but the hard work has been done for you!

Figure 16. Photo Blogging: Viewing Blog

Figure 17. Adding an Annotation

Adding notes is simple. If you have the level of access needed to do so, an Add Note button will appear in the photo’s toolbar. Press it, drag and size the square marquee, and type your note.




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A good example of using fl ickr notes (and comments) in an educational setting can be seen in this photo of Th e Merode Altarpiece. On the picture you can see educational notes from the instructor as well as notes from students. Th e comments thread beneath contains more contributions from students, questions, and answers.

Sets and SlideshowsMaking an ever-growing photo collection comprehensible and navigable to users other than yourself is an important part in encouraging user interaction. Flickr photo sets are simply groups of images that can be viewed and navigated apart from the rest of one’s photo collection. Note that photos in sets still exist in the main collection and in the chronologi-cal stream of photos-- they are not actually moved. Th is means when you update the main photo it is also updated in the photo set(s) it is part of; if you delete the main photo it is likewise deleted from the photo set(s) it occurs in.

Figure 19. Adding Photo to a Set

Figure 18. Viewing Annotations

Once saved, your notes fi eld— along with any others —are vis-ible by hovering over the individu-al note area on the photo itself.

Adding photos to a set is easy: use the Add to Set button on the photo tool-bar and select the set you wish to add the photo to (or create a new one).

Notes/Annotations



Th e Organizer provides a rich visual interface for viewing, searching, managing, manipu-lating, rearranging, and editing all of your photos and photo sets, making it easy to gener-ate sets for diff erent purposes. Remember, though, that the free fl ickr account level only allows for three photo sets at any one time.

Aft er adding a new photo to a set (or choosing a set from the list of sets on the left -hand side of any main fl ickr photo page), you will be taken to the Set View where you see a representa-tive photo from the set, notes about the set as a whole, and thumbnails of all pictures in the set for navigation.

Figure 20. Viewing a Photo Set

Figure 21. The Flickr Organizer

If you are viewing one of your own sets, you will have some tools available in Set View for manipulating and changing all of the photos that belong to a set. How-ever, if you own the set there is a much more powerful and intuitive interface avail-able from the navigation bar of any page on fl ickr... the Organizer:

Sets and Slideshows



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Slideshows are not only a fun and visually compelling way to browse a set, but it can be used as the basis for portable presentations accessible with just a browser, no powerpoint needed. For example, view this presentation oriented slide set on Donlin Creek Mine Development as a slideshow.

Flickr GroupsGood social soft ware not only allows users to interact with other users’ information and resources, but also allows them to interact with one another. Flickr Groups allow fl ickr users with shared interests of various kinds to create a common pool of photos, notes, and discussion threads. Some groups are run by the fl ickr organization, but most are created

and run by fl ickr users. Any user can create a group, and that group can be open to all or by invitation only.

Figure 22. Viewing a Slideshow

Using the View as Slideshow link at the top right of a Set page allows you to create an instant slideshow presentation using that set’s photos. You can control the speed and basic formatting of the slideshow:

Figure 23. Flickr “Coff ee” Group

Th e fl ickr “Coff ee Group” is a typical example.

Sets and Slideshows



As you can see in the illustration, the main Group view shows the latest photos added to the group, the most recent discussion threads, and links to all the photos, discussions, and members. Group members add photos to the pool using their own photo tool bar:

Th ere are groups of all kinds in fl ickr, from coff ee affi cionadoes to lovers of black and white photos, educational users to ugly postcards and food porn. Find a few you like and start your own!

Feeds and SyndicationNow we come to another central, defi ning characteristic of social soft ware: the presence of syndication feeds for site content. a feed is a machine-readable list of new and updated content on a web site. Th roughout fl ickr you will see links at the bottom of photo streams, group photo listings, tag pages, and cluster pages that say “Feeds for x available as RSS 2.0 and Atom”. I’ll go into detail in a further guide, but RSS and Atom are the two most com-mon formats for making syndicated information available. Depending on the application, the feed might contain blog posts, discussion entries, audio fi les (podcasts), video fi les, or whatever has been added. In this case the feeds will contain photos.

What does this mean for you as a user? It means you can easily subscribe to, keep track of, and repurpose fl ickr information. Let’s look at a few examples. For various reasons I am always on the lookout for good monkey photos. Using a simple Firefox browser plugin, I can view the most recently added pictures for any group, user, or tag without going to fl ickr at all.

Figure 24. Adding a Photo to a Group

Figure 25. Viewing RSS Feed in Firefox Sidebar

Flickr Groups



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Th e power of syndication must not be overlooked by the savvy educator. Feed readers are oft en called “aggregators” and for good reason-- they are not only a convenient way to access particular, changing information, but also a way to bring many disparate pieces of information together. You might have a single class in which 20+ students are using their blogs and fl ickr for refl ective activities, projects, peer review, etc. You will probably discover at least that many more sites about education and your particular area of con-

Figure 26. Viewing RSS Feed in Dedicated Feed Reader

Figure 27. Viewing RSS Feed in Web-Based Feed Reader

Th ere are various free dedi-cated feed readers that have advanced capabilities for searching feed items, storing and fi ling items, blogging about items, automating and collecting items based on keywords, and much more. Here is an example of a sub-scription to a friend’s photos in a popular dedicated feed reader called FeedDemon:

If you travel a lot or work from dif-ferent computers-- particularly those with slower connections, inadequate memory, etc.-- then a web-based feed reader, making syndicated content available to you wherever you can access the net in the most streamlined manner possible, might be a good solution. Here is an ex-ample viewing a subscriotion to all photos tagged archaeology using the Bloglines web-based feed reader:

Feeds and Syndication



tent expertise. You will probably start noticing that dozens of web sites you keep up with (or try to keep up with), such as newspapers, magazines, book reviews, literary journals, scientifi c publications off er these feeds. If you participate in discussion boards, they might provide feeds.

Without syndication and aggregation you will either have to spend an inordinate amount of time surfi ng the web in a conventional manner (only to fi nd much of that time wasted when nothing has been updated on many of the sites), or you can use the feeds and a feed-reader to let that content come to you. When a new photo has been posted to fl ickr, something new added to a blog, a new story in your favorite media outlet, or a new article in your favorite online publication, you will be instantly notifi ed. You can read the mate-rial right in the feed reader, save it, trash it, blog about it, or share it without ever wasting time fruitlessly fi ghting your way through the crowded traditional web routes.

Creative CommonsTh e philosophy of social soft ware places great value in collaboration and sharing--and not just in planned, expected ways. For this reason, many social soft ware applications will allow the application of Creative Commons license to the content they contain. Creative Com-mons (CC) licenses are an easy way to explicitly declare how your original material may be used by others. By applying the appropriate CC license, other users can make use of your work in approved ways without having to adhere to much more restrictive conventional copyright regulations and without having to track you down to ask permission fi rst. You can learn more about Creative Commons in the forthcoming Creative Commons Guide.

In Flickr, you can set a default license for uploaded photos. Th is license will apply to all photos uploaded from that point on. From that same licensing page you can also choose to change the license on earlier photos as a batch.

Th e license for individual photos can be seen (and changed) from the Additional Information block on the main photo page.

Figure 28. Additional Photo Information and License

Feeds and Syndication



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Th e Creative Commons licenses involve diff erent combinations of who can use the photo, what they can do with it, whether it can be used for commercial purposes or not, whether they have to attribute the photo back to you, and whether they are required to share their product in the same way you have shared yours. Further explanation of the license types can be found in the Creative Commons Guide

Third Party ApplicationsTh e last aspect of social soft ware we will be looking at is not readily apparent while using fl ickr. As you have probably started to realize, the real value of a social soft ware applica-tion goes beyond its functionality to include the information and exchanges by its users. “It’s the data, stupid!” might well be a mantra for aspiring social soft ware application developers. Flickr has spawned a great number of third party applications because it has purposefully focused on having transparent, open access to the data in a multitude of ways that are suitable to many kinds of developers. A few examples of interesting third party applications built on fl ickr data are:

Th e Flickr Color Picker (http://krazydad.com/colorfi elds/) - allows you to browse fl ickr photos by color and saturation using simpe selectors and sliders.•

Figure 30. Choosing a Specifi c License

Finally, you can choose which license you would like to apply (if any-- you can also reserve all rights as defi ned by United States copyright law by choos-ing “none”).

If you follow the Change link to the photo’s privacy page you should see a Creative Com-mons logo with a “modify” link:

Figure 29. Creative Commons License Change Link

Creative Commons



Retrievr (http://labs.systemone.at/retrievr/) - lets you search fl ickr photos by drawing a quick sketch of what you are looking for.

Flappr (http://bcdef.org/fl appr/) - provides a completely fl ash-based fl ickr browser

Dozens of interesting applications are gathered at fd’s Flickr Toys http://fl agrantdisregard.com/fl ickr/, from a mosaic maker to a badge generator, photo fortune generator to trading card maker...

Clearly, the developers at fl ickr couldn’t have conceived of-- much less created-- all of these “remixed” applications. But by making the fl ickr data readily available and being friendly to developers they have created a healthy community on both sides of the applica-tion: the visible side and the data side.

For teachers of all kinds, the availability of these many apps provide many more tools in the online “toolobox.” If you happen to teach a technical class (programming, web design, web development, etc) then fl ickr is an excellent (and fun) foundation for teaching basic skills and a valuable resource for useable images.

Conclusion and Further ResourcesIn this brief article we have looked at a few of the ways that fl ickr exemplifi es connecting to other users and pictures, and annotation/set features make it a great application when images are needed for online activities, whether it be a few images for a specifi c activity or complex sets used for art history or microscopy labs.

Th ere are many kinds of social soft ware that can be particularly useful for educational and/or professional purposes:

Social Bookmarking services such as del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/) and furl (http://furl.net/) facilitate management and storing of web bookmarks and links combined with powerful social soft ware features for sharing and discovering relevant resources with and by others.

Weblog tools such as Blogger (http://www.blogger.com/), WordPress (http://word-press.org), MovableType (http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/), and others make it easy for anyone to be their own web publisher not just for a site, but for a community.

Wikis are simple, collaboration based sites that anyone (or anyone in a selected group) can edit by simply following a link and editing the simple, plain-text based content. Th e most famous public wiki is Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page), with

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Third Party Applications



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more than than 1.1 million publically created articles in the English version alone. Other wiki services include WikiSpaces (http://www.wikispaces.com/), Wikia (http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page)(formerly WikiCities), and soft ware you can run on your own server such as PmWiki (http://www.pmwiki.org/)

Hopefully this guide will help you catch the excitement of the social soft ware revolu-tion that is currently engulfi ng the old web and creating a new, participatory Read/Write Web and allow you to fi nd unique and innovative uses for your classes.

Legal NoticeTh is material is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Sha-reAlike 3.0 License. Terms and conditions for distribution can be found at Creative Com-mons (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/).

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Conclusion and Further Resources