Today my Cats Can’t Read photo was posted to Reddit by PaperLess. I don’t think it made the front page, but it did do well on the Pics page, making it up to at least number 6 today. Back on February 16, 2008, this shot had 3,676 views and 33 faves which I thought was pretty good. When I first learned of it being on Reddit on March 10, about eight hours after it was posted, it has 24,176 views and 44 faves. Now, around 13 hours since it was linked, it is up to 32,022 views and 47 faves. According to Flickr, there have been over 28,000 views from Reddit users in just over half a day. Thanks for posting it, PaperLess.
I do have one request though of anyone who posts links to photos. Please link the post to the main photo page, not the original size or the JPEG itself. I often find posts directly to JPEGs, that is not allowed by the Flickr TOS and is rude. The photographer gets no credit for the image that way. Linking to the larger size pages is better because the photographer’s name and copyright information is there, but the viewers won’t likely see the caption under the photo or the photographer’s other work. Reddit users don’t have a reputation for exploring a site that has been linked. Even though I have had over 28,000 views on this photo alone today, views on the rest of my photos and my Photostream are maybe at most very slightly above average. I do have a lot of other good stuff people would enjoy and usually so do other photographers that get linked.
If you ever do come across a JPEG only photo on Flickr’s servers, this bookmarklet will take you to the photo page (if I can figure out where I got it I will add a credit). I use it frequently. Often you will find other interesting work by the same photographer.
For those that don’t know, Reddit is a site like Slashdot or Digg. You have to be a computer geek to have heard of them, but they are huge in the world of computer geeks and programmers. I get most of my news and interesting links from them. On Digg and Reddit, people post links they find interesting and they get voted up or down so the really interesting ones make it to the front page. As new stuff becomes more interesting they move down the list to make room. Unless its really good, most stuff doesn’t stay near the top for even a day. The amount of traffic these sites produce if you get linked and are popular can be enormous. Frequently it is enough to knock a site temporarily off line or at least make it unusably slow.
Update: One week later and I get another shot on Reddit thanks to digital. It got about 5,000 in the first three hours it was there.
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