Flickr now has a cluster feature. So far as I can tell, this selects the most-used keywords in a set or group, and offers “clusters” of them. Here’s the Seattle example:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/seattle/clusters/
So Flickr breaks it down into themed clusters: waterfront and scenic, Pike Place, Mariners and sports, the library and buildings, and Fremont, with its wonderful statues.
I found this out while surfing the Seattle counterpart to Blogging.LA. And I do tend to get a little misty-eyed over the Northwest on such occasions, so I visited the Flickr group for the page – and voila! Clustered goodness!
I also got a little homesick looking at the Victoria cluster:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/victoria/clusters/canada-bc-britishcolumbia/
And a result for the specific, “venicebeach” led to this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/venicebeach/clusters/california-losangeles-beach/
Specific, but with the general cluster at the end of the URL.
If I didn’t have Ridazz in three hours – and an imminent departure for it – I’d surf this all night. But I have a cross-city adventure to Echo Park to go on, and exploring Flickr’s clusters will have to wait.
However, for those of you with time – run a search on Flickr for “Oak Bay”. It comes back with all photos tagged from my home corner of Victoria. Which never ceases to amaze me – that Flickr has spread so far as to bring people in from places so, well, not wired. It’s one thing to see a zillion photos from a silicon forest town like Seattle, or a megalopolos like L.A., but it’s pretty incredible that people share photos from tiny hamlets in Northwest England like my dad’s hometown. Flickr’s a new way of thinking, and a new way of sharing images…and I love seeing it reshape how we can share our view of the world.
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