Flickr Archive

Today my thoughts and prayers are with everyone affected by the fires in California. The pictures show a scene straight out of a war movie. I thought it would be interesting to look at how the popular social media services are being used to report on the fires. Putting the various sites together shows an almost live look at what’s going on across the region. One thing I do notice is that there is no central keyword or search term to find everything, everyone lists their content in a different way. An idea would be to create "crisis centers" and aggregate the content together for easy locating.

Flickr

• Flickr is adding one image per minute on the top tags for the fire. Check out Irvine Fire and Santiago Fire for examples
• Terry P has a good number of photos on the Santiago fires

YouTube

• YouTube is showing several thousand videos when you aggregate the various searches. The top search is california fire returning close to 3,000 videos.

Sample video:

Google

• Google news keeps track of the news from sites that they consider news worthy
• Google blog search includes basically everyone else
• The LA Times has a Google Maps mashup showing where the fires are burning (hat tip to Robert Scoble)
• Another mashup of San Diego allowing GPS and coordinate submissions

Facebook

• A search returns nothing on "California Fire"

MySpace

• A search returns nothing on "California Fire"

Mahalo

• I have included Mahalo, not because it’s a major site, but because it’s new and has a mission of helping users find what they are looking for better than typical searching
• Mahalo has pages for: Malibu Fire, and the master page California Fires
• Both pages are good attempts at organizing the information, the California fires page is somewhat current, Malibu fires is a bit more outdated. The California fires page shows videos from yesterday but most of the news is from today which is good. I would suggest they point to searches on YouTube, Flickr, etc. to keep that page updated with more current information

Wikipedia

• Wikipedia has a great overview page of the various fires, locations and links to news

Twitter

• Edware Vielmetti submitted the following 2 news Twitter streams: @kpbsnews and @nateritter

What other sites are doing a good job of social media during these troubling times?

YouTube has announced today that they are launching new localized versions of their service. Flickr announced the same last week amidst concerns from German users over a concern about censorship.

What I wanted to discuss here is whether a user say in Italy would rather have a localized version of YouTube or an Italian company providing video sharing? Would a user in Germany prefer to have German flickr which is really just a translation of the American version or a German company providing similar features?

Flickr/YouTube have basically translated the site using a technique called "Internationalization and Localization" also called "i18n and L10n". Simplified, they take the bits of text across the site, translate them and can now offer a new version of the site in x language.

Franz Patzig posted (in German) some examples of the poor translations that Flickr is currently using. How many people will leave the service for this reason? I know that for me, when I use services that are clearly non-english oriented but where they attempted to make an English version, it doesn't sit well with me.

Here is a screenshot of the "new" Italian YouTube. You can see that the images have not translated. Does this piss you off as an Italian user? Does it seem like a "half-assed" job?

I don't have all of the answers but thought this might be a good bit for discussion. Till has posted a list of Flickr alternatives.  Till is a German and his list is a combo of both German and not companies.

Which do you prefer, if any? A localized version of a service, a local company offering similar service, or neither, the original language version? For example, if you are a native Italian, will you continue to use YouTube in the "native" English? Please leave your thoughts in the comments.

Earlier today, I posted an article from Franz Patzig about flickr and the censorship from their German customers. Someone then submitted it to Digg. About thirty minutes ago I received an email noting that on Digg, the Google ads somehow matched the story about flickr censorship to ads for Hitler's ringtones.

See the image below. What's interesting to me about this is two things: the content matching might be close to correct I guess if you assume that "germany + censorship" might equal "hitler" but ringtones? Clicking the link gives me one of those crappy monthly ringtone services but no mention of Hitler.

The "social context" is what's missing in these ads. "Hitler Ringtones" which has nothing to do with Hitler looks like SEO desperation on the advertiser's part…Google (and the others) also has a real weakness with the social context of terms.  Someone I was chatting with this afternoon mentioned that phrase to me with regards to ads, and you have to wonder as more of us create content online, whether ad companies will start to use this as a part of their matching systems. The algorithms don't understand social context or meaning.

Do you have good examples of very poor ad matching? Leave them in the comments.

Update: It appears several sites are confirming what we first reported yesterday. Check out the confirmations on ReadWriteWeb and Mashable. The official post is now available on the flickr blog.

This is unconfirmed but I have heard that Flickr will be launching several new languages (localization / internationalization) this coming week. Supporting this theory, community manager Heather Champ appears to be heading on an international tour of "24 Hours of Flickr" events based on her Upcoming event listing, hitting events in London, Berlin, Paris and Montreal.

If you have more details, please feel free to contact us. We'll also be watching for any response from Zooomr, which has, to date, touted its multi-lingual support as one of its primary benefits over Flickr.

In all of the interviews I have conducted, everyone believes customer service is vital to their business. And I believe it is crucial as well. After my documented experiences with Technorati, I decided to randomly pick 10 current web apps and put them to the test! One week ago, I sent each one a very basic e-mail for support. I gave each one a week to reply and below are the responses I received with my comments and a score for each one. Some did well, some did ok, some did poor. Let’s check out the winners and the losers!

The tested apps are in alpha order: Digg, Dogster, Edgeio, Faces, Flickr, MySpace, Skype, Technorati, Youtube

So here are the results! In best to worst order:

Dogster

For my inquiry they provided a form with the following confirmation after submission:

Woof Woof! We got your message.
We’ll definitely be reading it and get back to you within 72 hours (weekend may take a little longer).

Thanks so much for using and loving Dogster.

Bark, bark, bark!

Dogster: for the love of dog!

And their reply came in about 36 hours and included the following:

Allen,

We welcome all dogs from Heinz 57 mutts to pedigreed show dogs.

As for terriers? Here’s our breed list:

1. Airedale Terrier
2. American Hairless Terrier
9. Boston Terrier

Boston Terrier is right there in the number 9 position (alphabetically).

Thanks for loving Dogster. We love you right back!

Woof!

-dogster-

—————————————————————————-
Dogster & Catster: where no one knows you’re a human
dogster.com / catster.com

The following message was sent by “Allen” on Sat, 7 Oct 2006 14:34:00 -0700.

> Hi – Can you tell me if any kind of dog can be registered on dogster? I have > a small boston terrier and wondered if this type is allowed.
>
> Thank you, Allen

Comments: I appreciate both the confirmation of my submission and the funny, witty reply I received. The reply came in a reasonable amount of time. Great job – woof woof!

Digg

Only offered an e-mail address for inquiries, no form. Reply came within 24 hours and it is below:

Anyone can sign on to digg.com. There are topics for everyone weather
you’re interested in technology or world news. If you have any other
questions, please email us.

Thank you,

-The Digg Support Team.

allen wrote:
> Hi – can you tell me if anyone can register to use digg? I am not a techy but would be interested in rating stories in the business columns and sections. Do I need to be a web developer to sign up? Thanks, Allen

Comments: Digg would have been number one except for two small concerns. One is that support is only offered via e-mail, no form. Second is their use of the word “weather” – in this case, it should have been “whether” – so I deduct half a point for these small issues. Great job overall from Digg!

Skype

Skype provided an easy way to contact them. I am not including their reply because it was very, very exhaustive. Suffice to say they answered my question and in case their solution did not work, a way to escalate my issue.

Edgeio

Provided a form with a confirmation that showed what I submitted. I like that kind of confirmation. Reply came in about 24 hours and is listed below.

Yes, that would be an appropriate thing to list on edgeio.

On Oct 7, 2006, at 3:46 PM, wrote:

> To: (removed)
> From: (removed)
> Subject: [support]
>
> Someone left feedback on edgeio with the following information:
>
> email address: (removed)
> edgeio user name:
>
> ip address: (removed)
> cookied user name:
> cookied location: 0
>
> web page: http://www.edgeio.com/
>
> subject: [support]
>
> [description]
>
> ———————————————————————-> —
> hi – can you tell me if i can list old magazines on edgeio? i found a ton of old magazines like Forbes and Fortune and stuff and want > to get rid of them. Thanks, Allen

Matt Kaufman

Comments: Good job on the quick reply, and for including my original question inside the reply. Points deducted for listing all of the techy information inside the reply. As a mainstream application, there is no reason to include things like ip address, cookied user name, location, etc. The average Internet user would have no idea what those things are and would probably only confuse the situation.

Faces

Faces provided an easy way to contact them. Their reply and my original question is listed below.

Hi,
This email has been sent to help you with your problem at faces.com. The problem or question you had is repeated below. If you have further queries please return to the help page.

Currently we have a fairly small upload size restriction on files size – which only allows 8meg at a time – can you split the podcats up into 2 or 3 parts perhaps?

Thanks, Support
www.faces.com
———————————————————–
The question you had is:
———————————–
Member Id : Not available
Received : 10/7/2006 5:17:46 PM
Name : Not available
Email : removed
Subject : Site Problems
Comment : hi – can i upload my podcasts to faces and then put a player on my web site? they are like 20mb size and like 30 minutes each.
thanks, allen
Url : Not specified

UserAgent & IP Address Info
—————————————–
UserAgent : Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
Ip Address : removed

Comments: Reply came in 4 days, which I guess is still reasonable. I would have liked a confirmation on when to expect the reply. Also – they have included this technical information which has no need to be included and can confuse non-geeks. In the email they state that if I have further queries (whats a query) to return to the help page. Where is the help page and why can’t they include a link to it? A small spelling error “podcats”. They did a good job of appearing human and overall a pretty good job.

Yelp

I had the hardest time finding a way to contact support on Yelp. Once I found it, they “accepted” my request that I submitted. Their reply came within 24 hours and is listed below.

Yes you can review anything with an address, including CVS!

Jeremy

See all my reviews…

http://jeremy.yelp.com

(removed) wrote:
> Can people really write reviews on anything? I saw some reviews on drugstores and wanted to write a review about my favorite CVS location but wondered if that is ok. Please let me know. Thanks, Allen

Comments: Reply came quickly and was well formed. I am deducting points for not being able to find the support form.

Flickr

Flickr provided a reply in about 36 hours and it is below.

Hello,

Thanks for your question.

Please see this answer in our FAQ:

http://www.flickr.com/help/limits/#28

Regards, Monish

Comments: Why couldn’t they just copy the answer into the email. Why should I do the work to go find it? It would have been appreciated if they would have included the applicable FAQ and then perhaps a link to the full FAQ. In addition, they should have included my original request.

MySpace

MySpace accepted my inquiry (written while looking at HORRIBLE banner ads that flash so much, I think I have a disease now) and then replied in 36 hours with the following:

Hello,
If you can’t create an account, we recommend deleting your browser’s cookies and temporary internet files and then close all your browsers and try signing up again.

(Note: Mac users should use Safari or Firefox.)

Make sure you didn’t add any spaces at the end of your email address or verification code.

If someone is using your email address please send us an email from that email address to verify you are the legal owner and we will be able to delete that fake profile.

If you are shown an error message when attempting to create an account, please copy and paste it into the body of your reply email.

If this does not answer your question, please click:

http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=misc.contact

Thank you,
MySpace.com

Comments: My inquiry was not included so to some extent I have no idea what they are replying to. In addition, their reply was an automated reply that seems to have multiple answers so I have no idea what actually applies to me. And then they have the nerve to state that if these solutions did not answer my question, I can go back and look at a horrible banner ad and try to fill in the exact same form again.

YouTube

I am not going to paste in their reply because all they did was send me every FAQ they have. I asked if my mother could view the videos using WebTV. Nothing in their 200 line reply offered me anything. They told me basically if none of these 50 suggestions work, I should e-mail them AGAIN and they will look into my question. So who knows how long that entire process would take. I guess all of it is moot now that they are billionaires. Oh well, maybe they can buy some support staff now with their money.

Technorati

Unfortunately, Technorati is at the bottom of this list. I really like their service and so this upsets me but I must report the truth. They did not reply to any of my inquiries. So there is nothing for me to include.

(updated) – I was finally able to contact Liz (the vlog woman) via her Flickr account because there are no contact emails on the Technorati site. She was able to get their customer service person to answer my questions and both her and the cs person apologized and stated that they are swamped with cs e-mails. My suggestion is to provide an immediate automated reply stating that. I would have been a lot more relaxed with them had they said they were swamped. But to receive nothing is to believe they don’t care.

So I am willing to upgrade their score:

(I guess that is still passing in some universities)